If you take any type of beekeeping course, you will quickly learn that there are three different types of bees in a hive. Each type of honeybee has different, specialized parts to best serve their roles in a colony.
Each bee plats a really important role in the hive and it takes each to make a healthy and productive hive. Although many think the queen is, well, the queen, the truth is the collective of the hive is more important than any of the particular roles.
The workers are females. They have stingers in their abdomens, as well as special glands that allow them to produce wax. Their eyes are wide apart for better awareness while outside the hive. Unlike the other types, workers have hair over their whole bodies (including their eyes), which helps with pollination. Any beekeeping course will teach that these are the “workhorses” of the hive.
The drones are the male bees and are larger than the workers. These bees have two compact eyes that noticeably take up their entire head. Due to their size, they are very bad at flight. They also uniquely contain sperm cells in their abdomens, although they have no stingers.
The queen is a female and is very similar to a worker, but she has a long, torpedo-shaped abdomen that enables her to lay eggs into cells more easily.
