A bee colony is truly a marvel. It is a delicate social infrastructure whose complexity rivals the "have your assistant call my assistant" hierarchical structure of Hollywood deal-making.

The Queen

In a bee colony, the queen bee is queen because she is the only female capable of reproduction. Without her, the hive will die. There is only one queen in every bee colony, with two notable exceptions. Whenever the colony is preparing to swarm, more than one queen will be present as neighboring colonies gather to form a huge mass of bees. Also, when the queen is ready to pass her crown on to the next queen, a second reproductive female will be present in the bee colony.

Some bee colonies are queenless. They go happily about their honey-making work, but when they die at the end of their natural life spans, the colony dies out, in spite of a few worker bees who try to lay eggs. A colony with a queen can continue for several generations.

The Drones

A drone is, quite simply, a ladies man. The purpose of his brief existence is to mate with the queen. He usually takes his first flights when he is eight days old, leaving the bee colony to fly around outside, but the work of gathering pollen is beneath him. During his entire lifetime, he is fed inside the hive by worker bees?and he eats three times as much as the workers!

He becomes sexually mature at twelve days of age, and he perishes instantly upon mating. Oddly enough, he is only attracted to the queen at heights of over 20 feet, which is why hives are often built high in trees or along the eaves of a two-story building. Drones who do not mate are forced out of the hive when honey stops flowing in cold weather. They starve and freeze to death outside.

In Queen less colonies, however, drones are welcome to stay as long as they want, in spite of the stress they place on the colony because of their voracious appetites. For that reason, they are though to be the most charismatic of the bees, and the morale and temperament of bees in a hive with drones is though to be more pleasant because of them.

The Workers

The lowest rung of the social network of the bee colony is the worker, yet this is the largest and most important class of bee of all. All labor related to the hive is performed by workers, who are sexually undeveloped female bees. They ventilate the hive, guard the entrance, gather pollen and sap to make honey, keep the hive clean, feed the drones, care for the queen, build honeycombs, and guard the entrance to the hive. Workers live for about six weeks during the summer months, although those whose lives begin during the fall may live through to the next spring before they develop fully.