If you have ever heard the expression, “as busy as a bee,” it is an interesting note to discover the phrase originated from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales around the turn of the fifteenth century.  It compared the role of women in society to the lifestyle of worker bees, all of whom happen to be female as well.  The saying is also most definitely true; the life of a bee is almost all business with little time devoted to play or personal reflection.  There are over 2,000 species of bees throughout the world, with the most popular species within the United States being the European Honey Bee.

The Honey Bee’s life begins as a larva, newly hatched from an egg and unable to fend for themselves.  Younger bees are assigned the task of cleaning the hive and feeding the young, so even at early stages of development the Honey Bee is productive and a crucial link within the colony.  Newborn larvae are fed royal jelly at first, and then later are switched to pollen and honey for proper sustenance.  The only ones fed royal jelly during the entirety of their juvenile years are those destined to become queens, or bees that will eventually leave the colony and begin their own hive.

As their life stages progress, young bees are eventually promoted up to other essential tasks such as receiving pollen from harvesters and building combs within the hive through the use of beeswax.  These combs are not only where their precious honey is stored but it is also where future eggs will be laid by the queen.

During the later stages of a Honey Bee’s existence, they almost exclusively become foragers.  By leaving the hive and collecting pollen for the production of honey the European Bee essentially fulfills two natural requirements at once; providing food for offspring and pollinating nearby flowering plants and trees.  A pollinated fruit tree may produce as much as 65% more during harvest, making the Honey Bee possibly one of the most invaluable insects in the history of mankind.

When queen bees are born, their life is completely different in virtually all aspects.  Once they take flight their primary objective is to locate and mate with several male drones away from the colony, and each of the male bees will die after this process.  The queen then returns to the colony fertilized and shortly thereafter departs with a swarm of workers to a predetermined location in order to begin a new home.  A wax comb is the first order of business so the queen has somewhere to begin depositing her eggs, and afterwards her entire life is devoted solely to reproduction.  If she chooses to fertilize eggs they will be born female workers; if she does not then they will become male drones.  This allows the queen to keep a healthy balance over all of her kingdom and to ensure future generations are able to repeat the entire process.