Honeybee Series: Inside the Colony

Each member of the honeybee colony has specific duties they perform in the hive. The queen is mainly to lay eggs and the drones are specifically to mate with a virgin queen of another hive. The workers do all the rest of the labor needed to keep the hive functioning. Generally, inside bees are younger and outside bees are older. They can perform any of the roles needed in an emergency, but they generally follow a progression of duties. This progression can be interrupted by the queen not laying, so nurse bees would not be necessary, or as in the case of a swarm, all bees turn to foraging or making honeycomb to build a new hive. If all the young worker bees were killed, the foragers could reactivate their food glands and wax glands. If all the foragers were killed, the young bees could learn to become foragers in a short time.