Bees do not give birth to live young like mammals. Instead, bees reproduce by laying eggs. This fundamental difference is central to understanding bee biology and their life cycle. The queen bee is responsible for laying all the eggs that develop into new bees.
Understanding Bee Reproduction: Eggs, Not Live Birth
Bee reproduction begins with the queen bee laying eggs within the honeycomb cells. She places one tiny, cylindrical egg, about half the size of a grain of rice, into each cell. The queen controls the sex of her offspring by deciding whether to fertilize an egg.
Fertilized eggs develop into female bees, which can become worker bees or, under specific conditions, new queen bees. Unfertilized eggs develop into male bees, known as drones. A queen can lay between 1,000 to 2,000 eggs daily, adapting her laying pattern to the hive’s needs and the season.
The Bee Life Cycle: From Egg to Adult
The developmental journey of a bee, known as complete metamorphosis, involves four distinct stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. The egg stage lasts for about three days, during which the egg remains attached to the bottom of the honeycomb cell. After this period, the egg hatches into a larva.
The larval stage is characterized by rapid growth, with the worm-like larva fed by worker bees. This stage lasts approximately six days, during which the larva sheds its skin multiple times. Once fully grown, the larva spins a cocoon, and the cell is capped with wax by worker bees, marking the beginning of the pupa stage.
Within this sealed cell, the bee undergoes transformation, developing adult features like wings, legs, and eyes. The pupal stage duration varies by caste: about 7.5 days for a queen, 12 days for a worker, and 14.5 days for a drone. The adult bee then chews its way out of the cell, emerging to join the colony.
Roles in the Colony’s Reproduction
Within a social bee colony, specific roles are assigned to different bee castes, each contributing to the hive’s reproductive success. The queen bee is the sole reproductively active female, responsible for laying all the eggs that populate the colony. She mates only once during her life, on a mating flight, storing enough sperm to fertilize eggs for several years.
Drones are male bees whose function is to mate with the queen. They do not participate in foraging for food or hive maintenance; their role centers around reproduction and genetic diversity. Worker bees are sterile females who perform all other tasks necessary for the colony’s survival, such as cleaning, foraging, feeding larvae, and building honeycomb, but they do not lay eggs.
Diverse Reproductive Strategies: Solitary Bees
While honey bees live in social colonies, many other bee species are solitary, with a different reproductive approach. Solitary bees do not form colonies with a queen, workers, and drones. Instead, individual female solitary bees build and provision their own nests.
A female solitary bee constructs a nest, which can be underground or in hollow plant stems, and creates individual cells for her eggs. She provisions each cell with a food source, a ball of pollen and nectar, before laying a single egg on it. After laying the egg and providing food, she seals the cell and may repeat the process in other cells, sealing the entire nest. Unlike social bees, solitary bee mothers do not interact with their offspring after the eggs are laid.