Honey Bee Worker

Distribution: Cosmopolitan

Size Length: 15 mm

Life Span: 6–9 Months

Diet: Herbivorous

Social life: Colony

IUCN red list status: No status



Honey bees are social insects that live in the same dwelling and rely on each other for the survival of the hive. In the hive, each bee has a responsibility. The drones mate with the queen. The queen lays eggs. The worker bees are all female and they do all the work for the hive. Bees go through four stages of development: Egg, Larvae, Pupae and Adult Bee. One colony, as has been seen, may have as many as 80 000 workers. Workers perform the following tasks inside the hive: Cleaning, feeding the baby bees, feeding and taking care of the queen, packing pollen and nectar into cells, capping cells, building and repairing honeycombs, fanning to cool the hive and guarding the hive. A well-developed sting permits them to defend the colony very efficiently. If a worker bee uses her stinger, she will die. Workers outside of the hive are known as Field Bees and gather nectar and pollen from flowers. Nectar is a sweet watery substance that the bees gather. After they process the nectar in their stomach they regurgitate it into the honeycomb cells, after a while the final result is honey.