Honey bee life cycle Honey bee life cycle The honey bee life cycle, here referring exclusively to the domesticated Western honey bee, depends greatly on their social structure. Unlike a bumble bee colony or a paper wasp colony, the life of a honey bee colony is perennial. The three types of honey bees in a hive are: queens (egg-producers), workers (non-reproducing females), and drones (males whose main duty is to find and mate with a queen). Honey bees hatch from eggs in three to four days. They are then fed by worker bees and develop through several stages in the cells. Cells are capped
Honey bee various regions globally, such as tomatoes, which are not effectively pollinated by honey bees. Primarily in places where the bee was imported by humans, periodic collapses in honeybee populations have occurred at least since the late 19th century. Starting in the first decade of the 21st century, abnormally high die-offs (30–70% of hives) of European honey bee colonies have occurred in North America. This has been dubbed "colony collapse disorder" (CCD) and was at first unexplained. It seems to be caused by a combination of factors rather than a single pathogen or poison, possibly including neonicotinoid pesticides or Israeli acute