The life of a honey bee colony is perennial, unlike a bumble bee colony.
There are three castes in a colony: queens, which produce eggs; drones or males, which mate with new queens and have no stinger; and workers, which are all non-reproducing females. The queen lays eggs singly in cells of the comb. Larvae 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 by worker bees when the larva pupates. Queens and drones are larger than workers and so require larger cells to develop. A colony may typically consist of tens of thousands of individuals.
Development from egg to emerging bee varies among queens, workers and drones. Queens emerge from their cells in 16 days, workers in 21 days and drones in 24 days. Only one queen is usually present in a hive. New queens develop in larger cells through differential feeding of royal jelly by workers. When the existing queen ages or dies or the colony becomes very large a new queen is raised by the worker bees. The new queen takes one or several nuptial flights and once she is established starts laying eggs in the hive.
A fertile queen is able to lay fertilized or unfertilized eggs. Each unfertilized egg contains 50% of the queen's genes and develops into a haploid drone. The fertilized eggs develop into either workers or virgin queens.
The average lifespan of a queen is three to four years; drones usually die upon mating or are expelled from the hive before hibernation; and workers may live for a few weeks in the summer and several months over winter.
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