How Bees Grow into Their Different Roles
What are baby bees called?
The scientific name for a baby bee is a “larva”. Collectively, all the baby bees are called the brood. So, how does the brood get its start in life? That depends on the type of bee they are to become: Worker, Drone, or Queen?
The Most Important Bee of All
An egg that will become a Queen bee will go from egg to a queen in just 16 days. The potential Queen is fed nothing but royal jelly, which allows her to develop fully and allowing her to reproduce.
The Queen produces a variety of bees for the hive.
Different Types of Bees
For Drone bees, the Queen lays an unfertilized egg, which will become a Drone bee in 24 days.
For everyday Worker bees, they set a fertilized egg vertically at the bottom of the cell.
Once the egg hatches the larva is abundantly fed by the Nurse bees. A larva receives 1,300 visits per day until the bees eventually close the cell with a wax covering.
After eight days, the larva, swollen with food, become a Pupa and their organs are fully developed.
Twelve days after the closing of the cell, a young bee is eventually born.
During the whole process, the brood remains at a constant temperature of 35 degrees Celsius.
Just after it emerges from the cell, a new adult bee eats honey as its first meal.
Worker and Drone bees are also then fed royal jelly, but only for the first 3 days after the egg has hatched. After that, they get ‘bee bread’, a honey and pollen mixture. This stunts the growth of the Worker bee so that she cannot reproduce.
(Fun fact: all worker bees are female).
At this point, the honeybee, whether it be a Queen, Worker, or Drone, is ready to get to work.
For the four days following their birth, the adult bees job is to clean the cells for the next batch of new eggs to be laid.
Near the sixth day, it becomes a Nurse bee, producing royal jelly, and maintaining the brood at a constant temperature by visiting the cells to feed the larva inside.
And then, the cycle begins all over again!
