01Days 0 to 3
A grain of rice in a wax cell
The queen lays each egg in its own six-sided wax cell in the brood area of the comb.Confirmed fact, source 1 A honey bee egg is 1 to 1.5 mm long and looks like a tiny grain of rice.Confirmed fact, source 1 Unfertilised eggs develop into drones (males); fertilised eggs develop into females.Confirmed fact, source 1 At hatching the larva does not break out; the egg shell, the chorion, slowly dissolves as the larva becomes active.Confirmed fact, source 3 UF IFAS says honey bee eggs hatch after 3 days.Confirmed fact, source 1
02Days 3 to 9
Six days of feeding
Larvae lie white and curled in a C shape at the bottom of the open cell, so beekeepers call them open brood.Observation, source obs. 1 Nurse workers make larval food in glands in their heads and put their heads into the cell to feed.Confirmed fact, source 3 Diet decides caste: a female larva on standard brood food, pollen and nectar becomes a worker; one fed rich royal jelly becomes a queen.Confirmed fact, source 1 Royal jelly for queen larvae is richer in sugar than the brood food given to worker and drone larvae.Confirmed fact, source 3 A larva moults five times and so passes through 5 instars; the first four last about one day each.Confirmed fact, source 3 The worker larval stage lasts 6 days (drone 6.5, queen 5.5).Confirmed fact, source 1
03From day 9
Sealed in with wax
In a worker cell, the cell is capped with wax on the ninth day.Confirmed fact, source 4 Adult workers tending the brood cover the prepupal larva with a wax capping.Confirmed fact, source 1 Inside the capped cell the larva stretches out lengthwise; this is the prepupal stage, the fifth instar.Confirmed fact, source 3 The prepupa spins a silk cocoon around itself with its spinneret.Confirmed fact, source 3 Early in cocoon building the prepupa empties its gut, which it has not done while feeding.Confirmed fact, source 3
04Days 9 to 21
Remade under the cap
Beneath the capping, the prepupa moults into a pupa.Confirmed fact, source 1 In the pupa the body's tissues reorganise into the organs of the adult bee.Confirmed fact, source 3 The eyes gain their colour, and the body cuticle darkens as the pupa ages.Observation, source obs. 3 Worker pupae take 12 days and queens 8; for drones IN1005 gives 14.5 days, while the University of Arizona sheet gives 15.Confirmed fact, source 1source 4
05Days 21 to 21
Chewing out on day 21
When the pupa has moulted into an adult, she chews her way out through the cap.Confirmed fact, source 3 From egg to adult, a worker takes 21 days, between the queen and the drone.Confirmed fact, source 1 The new adult first stays a few hours in the cell while her fresh cuticle hardens.Confirmed fact, source 3 Full maturation can take another eight to ten days after she leaves the cell.Confirmed fact, source 3
06From day 21
Weeks of indoor work
In her first days as an adult, a worker is still developing, and her only task is cleaning cells; otherwise she rests or grooms.Confirmed fact, source 5 Nursing usually lasts about a week, from roughly 4 to 12 days of adult age.Confirmed fact, source 5 Nurses have well developed hypopharyngeal glands that let them produce the larval diet.Confirmed fact, source 2 Comb building bees have shrunken food glands but well developed wax glands.Confirmed fact, source 2 From about 12 to 21 days of adult age, middle aged bees do some 15 tasks, from comb building to nectar processing and guarding.Confirmed fact, source 5 UF IFAS IN1005 says workers do tasks in a predictable age order, but UF IFAS IN1102 notes flexibility: if many foragers are killed by pesticides, younger bees start foraging sooner.Confirmed fact, source 2source 1
07
Out into the light
The oldest workers become foragers, the honey bees people meet most often.Confirmed fact, source 1 Before foraging, a bee usually spends a few days on orientation flights, learning the hive entrance and the landscape around it.Confirmed fact, source 6 In a French field study, bees started foraging at an average adult age of about 20 to 22 days, with wide variation.Observation, source obs. 6 Foragers collect pollen and nectar outside the hive.Confirmed fact, source 7 Once a bee has switched to foraging, she no longer does tasks inside the nest.Confirmed fact, source 5
08
A short summer life
Kunc et al. (2019) give summer generation workers a lifespan of between 15 and 48 days.Confirmed fact, source 8 In a French study by Prado et al. (2020), bees tagged at emergence from April to September lived about 19 to 21 days on average.Observation, source obs. 6 Foragers die within days of starting to forage, on average 7 to 10 days.Confirmed fact, source 7 Johnson (2010) says foragers work themselves to death over a couple of weeks, longer than the 7 to 10 days Münch et al. report.Reported by the farm, source reported 5source 7 The age at first flight and at the start of foraging largely sets how long a bee lives.Statistical estimate, source est. 6 Deaths during foraging are generally assumed to be due to predators and weather.Reported by the farm, source reported 6
09
The winter bees
Münch et al. (2013) call winter, or diutinus, bees the longest lived workers, able to survive almost a year.Confirmed fact, source 7 Kunc et al. (2019) put winter bee survival at up to 8 months.Confirmed fact, source 8 Winter bees develop when brood rearing stops and the larval signal, brood pheromone, is gone from the colony.Confirmed fact, source 7 They keep a broodless nest through winter and store large reserves of pollen derived nutrients in their bodies.Confirmed fact, source 9 Winter bees carry more of the storage protein vitellogenin and have an enlarged fat body.Confirmed fact, source 8 Summer bees, by contrast, have higher juvenile hormone and enlarged hypopharyngeal glands.Confirmed fact, source 8
