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 surface of the comb, which is horizontal (not vertical, as in other species), and worker bees orient the dance in the actual compass direction of the resource to which they are recruiting. "Apis mellifera carnica" honey bees use their antennae asymmetrically for social interactions with a strong lateral preference to use their right antennae. There has been speculation as to honeybee consciousness. The bee was used as a symbol of government by Emperor Napoleon I of France. Both the Hindu "Atharva Veda" and the ancient Greeks associated lips anointed with honey with the gift of eloquence and even of prescience.