×
HoneyBee School and Supply

New Beekeeper Course – The Development of the 3 Castes of Honeybees in a Hive

A new beekeeper will want to understand the basic hierarchy in their beehive.

The female worker, male drone, and the queen bee all start out as identical eggs laid by a queen bee. Differences in fertilization and food determine whether the eggs will develop into a male or female bee and of which caste the bee will become (worker, drone, or queen). It is nothing short of miraculous how these two factors determine the developmental path for each bee and ultimately their role in the beehive/colony. Although the eggs laid by a queen are identical, the queen only fertilizes the eggs destined to become female worker bees or another queen. The queen withholds fertilizing eggs that she determines will become male drone bees. Drones develop from unfertilized eggs; queen and worker bees develop from fertilized eggs.

Female Worker

The queen deposits an egg that stands upright in the bottom of a honeycomb cell. The tiny eggs look like miniature grains of white rice. Prior to the queen depositing the egg, worker bees, acting as nurse bees, have cleaned out the cell from the previously hatched bee.  They may have lined it with a small amount of propolis. For three days, the egg incubates in the open cell, then it hatches. The larvae that emerges in beehives is attended to by nurse bees an average of 1,500 times a day. The main purpose of these visits is to feed the rapidly growing larvae. For the worker bee, drone, and queen, the food is the same for the first three days of the larval stage.

Nurse bees fill the cell with a substance called Royal Jelly, so much so that the larvae floats in the substance. Royal Jelly is made by the nurse bees combining an enzyme they produce in their hypopharyngeal gland in their head with honey and pollen. The larvae gorge on this food, quickly growing and filling the space in the cell.

Queen Bees

For the queen bee larvae, this diet is maintained for the duration of the larval stage, which for a queen is approximately 5 ½ days (brood nest temperature can affect this timing). This protein and carbohydrate rich diet causes the queen bee to fully develop reproductive organs and pheromone production glands. Physiological traits are not present in the female worker bee. But, the extended period of time the queen is fed Royal Jelly also causes her to develop more quickly and to be larger than a worker bee, requiring a much larger cell in which to develop.

Queen cells look like peanut shells extending out from the honeycomb. After the queen larvae gorges on Royal Jelly for 5 ½ days, the worker bees cap her cell with wax. This starts the pupa stage of development, which lasts for about 7 ½ days. During which, the larvae spins a cocoon, transforms into a pupa.  Then the final stages of development take place. Approximately 16 days after laying the egg, the queen bee, fully developed, chews through the wax capping.

Male Drones

Similar development takes place for the female workers and the male drones.  (With the exception that both larvae stages are fed Royal Jelly only for the first three days). In this period, the nurse bees ween them to a diet of honey and pollen,  They also ensure capped cells for the pupa stage. Worker bees are in the larva development phase for six days and the pupa stage for 12 days, for a total development time of 21 days. Drones stay in the larva stage for 6 ½ days.  They are in the pupa stage for 14 ½ days, for a total development period of 24 days. Thus, drones are also larger than worker bees, so their cells are slightly larger and have domed cappings.