Social Bees

Colonies are divided into three social classes, or castes: queens, drones, and workers. Each colony contains a single queen—a sexually mature female whose function is to lay eggs. She is ordinarily the mother of the whole colony. Drones are male bees, produced to provide mates for new queens. A colony of 60,000 bees generally contains only a few hundred drones. Workers are sexually immature females. They are the most numerous bees in the hive, and are responsible for collecting food, caring for the young, and building the honeycomb.

After mating, the queen stores sperm in a pouch in her body. She releases sperm periodically during egg-laying. Eggs that come into contact with the sperm, and are thus fertilized, develop into females; eggs that are not fertilized develop into males. The queen usually stores enough sperm to last her lifetime (two to five years).

A worker develops from a female larva fed mainly on beebread, a mixture of pollen and honey. A queen will develop from a female larva fed only on royal jelly, which is secreted by glands in the head of an adult worker.

The two major types of social bees are the honeybee and the bumblebee.