Honey bee life cycle lay fertilized or unfertilized eggs. Each unfertilized egg contains a unique combination of 50% of the queen's genes and develops into a haploid drone. The fertilized eggs develop into either diploid workers or virgin queens if fed royal jelly. The average lifespan of a queen is three to four years; drones usually die upon mating or are expelled from the hive before the winter; and workers may live for a few weeks in the summer and several months in areas with an extended winter. The weight progression of the worker egg, larva: Honey bee life cycle The honey bee life
Honey Bee Genome Sequencing Consortium Honey Bee Genome Sequencing Consortium The Honey Bee Genome Sequencing Consortium is an international collaborative group of genomics scientists, scientific organisations and universities trying to decipher the genome sequences of the honey bee ("Apis mellifera"). It was formed in 2001 by American scientists. In the US, the project is funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, the University of Illinois Sociogenomics Initiative, and various beekeepers association and the bee industry. First scientific findings show that the honey bee