some sweet Social Culture of the Honeybee

Like any social group, honeybees have cliques or castes (the technical term).

There are drones, workers, larvae, and the Queen.

Drones are the males and they have no stinger. You can tell them apart from the workers because they are bigger and their compound eyes are huge and look like one unit where as on the workers, the eyes are smaller and in more distinct eye shapes. The drones are considered helpless in a way because they can't feed themselves, the workers feed them, they can't make wax and they can't secrete royal jelly. Their sole purpose and function is to mate with the Queen. They mate "on the wing," which means in flight, and die immediately there after.

Conversely, all worker bees are female and they DO sting. They are smaller than the drones and have two distinct eyes versus the drones very large ones (it's hypothesized that they are extra big so that they can see the Queen to mate). Worker bees forage, produce wax and can secrete royal jelly from a gland in their heads. Royal jelly is the determining factor for what makes a Queen bee.

The Queen bee starts out as a little white egg that is laid by an existing Queen. Then, the worker bees, who feed all the young, will feed a few specific eggs royal jelly, a special food that makes the larvae develop into a Queen. If a larvae isn't fed royal jelly then it will hatch into a worker bee. The drones are hatched from eggs that the Queen lays but that were not fertilized. Only fertilized eggs yield females.

Also, another distinguishing characteristic of a Queen is the Queen cell. Workers hatch from regular honey comb, where as the Queen is housed in a vertical, peanut shaped cell.

Earlier, I spoke of the colony will "fix a Queen fight." What that means is that there will be many Queen cells, maybe 5 or 10, and when they hatch, the way that one Queen is chosen in through Queen fights so that way the fittest will win. However, Dr. David Tarpy, a professor at NC State in entomology, specializing in honeybees, said that some how the bees will favor one particular Queen and will aid her, "fix the fight," to make sure that she wins.

Bees have specific rules, they are very clean and will never, EVER leave their Queen. They are an admirable species.