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
African Honey Bee (organization) and mentored by an African Honey Bee senior beekeeper. Prospective beekeepers from rural areas, generally between the ages of 18 – 26, spend 18 months in an incubation programme, during which time they are officially employed by the incubator as salaried working interns. During their incubation, the interns complete an African Honey Bee developed program in beekeeping. They work under guidance of senior beekeepers on an African Honey Bee commercial bee farm. The interns are also assisted to start their own beekeeping business on a small scale, with the view of increasing it once they complete the incubation process. At