Honey bees live in colonies and are social insects. Within each colony there are worker bees, drones, and a queen.

Most of the adult honey bees in any colony are female worker bees that tend the young, gather and store nectar and pollen, make honey, royal jelly and beebread, produce wax, and care for the queen and drones.

The male members of the colony, the drones, make up only a small percentage of the hive population and exist only to mate with the queen.

The queen’s primary duty is to lay eggs…up to 3,000 a day!

The queen also produces pheromones that tell the bees that

she is on the job.

Her pheromone inhibits the development of other queens — hence, only one queen.

She is fed and cared for by worker bees and only leaves the hive to mate.

She maintains the sperm she collected during mating in a special pouch in her body, and can continue laying eggs for up to two years.