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
Russian honey bee bees that exhibited aggressive behavior against colony-level mite infestations. Accordingly, experimental research has found that mite populations decline in colonies of pure Russian and of hybrid Russian-Italian bees. The mechanisms through which mite populations are controlled in these colonies include hygienic behavior towards mites, and possibly increased aggression towards mites. Russian stocks also have been shown to resist infection by tracheal mites. Russian honey bee The Russian honeybee refers to honey bees ("Apis mellifera") that originate in the Primorsky Krai region of Russia. This strain of bee was imported into the United States in 1997 by the USDA's Honeybee Breeding,