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
Western honey bee been collecting honey from bees for thousands of years, with evidence in the form of rock art found in France and Spain, dating to around 7000 BCE. The honey bee is one of the few invertebrate animals to have been domesticated. Bees were likely first domesticated in ancient Egypt, where tomb paintings depict bee-keeping. Europeans brought bees to North America in 1622. Beekeepers have selected bees for several desirable features: These modifications, along with artificial change of location, have improved bees from the point of view of the beekeeper, and simultaneously made them more dependent on beekeepers for their survival.