The drawing on the left shows, 1. the young larva, 2. the larva just before pupation, 3. the pupa.

The eggs hatch into maggot-like grubs (see left) and are fed by the workers. The workers gather pollen and nectar from flowers. Honey bees, like bumblebees get all their food from flowers. The honeybee worker's tongue is covered in tiny hairs and is long and flexible, so is good for sucking nectar from flowers (see above right). It is the queen who has the power to decide whether the egg she lays will be fertilized or unfertilized as she can release or withhold at will sperm stored in her spermatheca. Fertilized eggs can develop into workers or new queens, and unfertilized eggs into drones (males).

The nectar is carried back to the hive in the stomach of the bee, then it stored and becomes honey as the water in the nectar evaporates and the sugar is more concentrated. Pollen is carried back to the hive in pollen baskets in the bee's hindmost legs, (see below). The first leg has a comb to clean pollen and dust off the antennae and tongue

Honey bees have the typical hexagonally faceted compound eyes of insects, each eye has around 6300 ommatidia (facets), see the drawing of the head above. They also have 3 ocelli, or simple eyes.

Food. Honeybee food consists almost entirely of pollen and nectar. - both from flowers. Pollen is mainly protein, and nectar is mainly carbohydrate.

Wax. Young workers secrete wax from scales on the underside of the abdomen. This wax is moulded to make cells.

Lifespan. After emerging as an adult a normal worker's lifespan is just 4 - 6 weeks during the summer months.

Flight speed has been recorded as 2.5 metres per second with a wing beat of 250 per second. Compare this with other insects.

Work. On emergence as an adult the worker does a variety of jobs, usually this depends on age and experience. 1. Inexperienced young workers clean cells and feed older larvae. 2. They move on to feed younger, more delicate larvae on royal jelly (see below). 3. Next comes general housekeeping, cleaning, throwing out debris, storing food, ventilating the hive on hot days. 4. This stage usually occurs at around 3 weeks into adult life. They emerge into the open for the first time and practice flying, then they take up guard duty at the nest entrance. %. Finally, the most dangerous job of all - they leave the safety of the hive and their sisters and mother to fly off to forage for food. They forage for food until they die. When winter approaches, or when cold weather prevents foraging, the workers huddle round the queen and feed on stored honey until the weather is better, or spring arrives.

Foraging range. Studies have shown that the normal foraging range of honeybees is 1 - 6 km., however in rare occurrences they have been known to forage as far as 20 km from the hive. Obviously this has implications for the spread of pollen from genetically modified crops.

"Queen substance" is produced by glands in the queen's mandibles (jaw). As long as the queen is healthy this queen substance prevents the development of the workers' ovaries. Once the queen is old or dies the workers ovaries develop and they feed some larva enough royal jelly to produce new queens.

Queen substance is passed throughout the hive like all the other contact pheromones by the bees licking, grooming and feeding each other.

Royal jelly is inappropriately named. Most royal jelly production in a hive is fed to ordinary female worker honeybees. It is a mixture of two liquids produced in the head glands of nurse worker bees - the hypopharyngeal and mandibular glands. Larvae that are destined to be workers are fed for two days on royal jelly. Larva that are destined to be queens are fed all their larval lives on royal jelly. Royal jelly is rich in amino acids, vitamins and sugars.

When a honeybee stings a mammal the bee dies because its sting stays in the mammal's skin and pulls out the poison sac and some of the abdominal contents. This is because the sting is barbed at the end, and mammal skin is stretchy. If the bee were to sting another insect it could easily pull out its sting as the insect is covered with brittle chitin. The muscles attached to the poison sac continue to pump even though they are no longer attached to the bee, so it is important to scrape off or pull out the sting as quickly as possible.

"Killer bees" are a hybrid of two honeybee species - one from Africa and the other from South America.

Differences between bumblebees and honey bees.
There are some very important differences between the bumblebee life cycle and the honeybee life cycle. There is no mouth-to-mouth exchange of food between adult bumblebees, nor do adults groom each other or the queen as is seen in honeybees. As yet no equivalent to the honeybee "queen substance" has been found; in honeybee hives workers licking the queen and each other pass the "queen substance" throughout the hive, and this pheromonal control enables the queen to maintain dominance. Bumblebee queens appear to maintain dominance purely by aggressive behaviour.

With bumblebees the colony is started anew each year with only the new queens surviving the winter. Whereas the honeybee hive continues year after year, even though there may have been a change of queens during the summer. During the cold winter months the honey bee workers cluster around the queen deep in the hive to maintain a high enough temperature to survive, they also feed on their store of honey. So when the weather warms enough for them to forage there are already a large number of workers. Honeybee queens never forage, they live their lives inside the hive only emerging to found a new colony when they swarm with a full compliment of workers. Bumblebees in temperate climates never swarm, however there are a few tropical species that initiate new colonies by swarming.