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
Caucasian honey bee Dadant 1975 Caucasian honey bee The Caucasian honey bee ("Apis mellifera caucasia", commonly misspelled "caucasica") is a subspecies of the Western honey bee. The Caucasian honey bee originates from the high valleys of the Central Caucasus. Georgia is the “central homeland” for the subspecies, although the bees also can be found in eastern Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Caucasian (Georgian) honeybee has a long history of importance to beekeeping worldwide. The bees were first introduced in the United States in 19th century. Caucasian honey bee was a subspecies that came to have enduring interest to U.S. beekeepers. Frank Benton (1852-1919)