Bees do lay eggs, and the egg stage is the foundation of the entire colony structure. Every individual bee—worker, drone, or future queen—begins life as a tiny egg placed within a hexagonal wax cell. This initial stage is a three-day period of incubation. The continuous production of eggs allows a bee colony to maintain its population, replace aging members, and adapt to changing seasons.
The Role of the Queen and Worker Bees
The primary responsibility for laying eggs belongs to the queen bee, who is the only fully reproductive female in a healthy honeybee colony. She controls the fertilization process and lays eggs almost constantly during peak seasons. A productive queen can lay between 1,000 and 2,000 eggs every day, sometimes exceeding her own body weight in egg mass over a 24-hour period. The volume of eggs she produces is regulated by the colony’s needs and the availability of resources. Worker bees, who are sterile females, prepare and clean the wax cells and tend to the developing brood.
If the queen dies or is failing, some worker bees can develop ovaries and begin laying eggs. These worker-laid eggs are always unfertilized and only develop into male bees, signaling distress within the colony.
How Fertilization Determines the Bee’s Future
The queen bee has a unique biological mechanism that determines the sex of her offspring at the moment of laying. She stores sperm from her mating flights in an internal organ called the spermatheca, which allows her to lay both fertilized and unfertilized eggs. The decision to fertilize an egg is based on the size of the wax cell she is inspecting.
When laying in a standard worker cell, she releases sperm to fertilize the egg, resulting in a diploid female with two sets of chromosomes. If she lays an egg in a larger drone cell, she withholds the sperm, and the unfertilized egg develops into a haploid male drone, possessing only one set of chromosomes. This system, known as haplodiploidy, is the basis for sex determination in honeybees.
All fertilized, diploid eggs have the potential to become either a worker or a queen. The difference between these two female roles is determined by the specialized diet the resulting larva receives, not the egg itself. A larva fed exclusively on royal jelly develops into a queen, while one switched to a diet of pollen and honey becomes a worker bee.
The Developmental Stages After Laying
The bee egg is a translucent white object, cylindrical in shape, measuring about 1.5 millimeters long. The queen positions the egg upright and centrally at the bottom of the clean wax cell, where it remains attached by a small mucous strand. The egg stage lasts consistently for about three days across all three bee castes.
After this period, the egg hatches into a soft, white, legless larva that resembles a small grub. This is a phase of intense feeding and exponential growth, lasting approximately six days, during which the larva sheds its skin multiple times. Once the larva is fully grown, worker bees seal the cell with a wax capping.
The insect then begins the pupal stage, spinning a cocoon and undergoing complete metamorphosis inside the capped cell. The total time from egg to a fully emerged adult bee varies depending on the caste. Queen bees have the fastest development, emerging in about 16 days, while worker bees require approximately 21 days. Male drones take the longest to complete their transformation, emerging after about 24 days.