The colony

A colony consists of three types of honeybees: queen, workers and drones. In winter, the colony consists of a queen and approximately 10,000 workers. In summer, we find a queen, 20,000 to 40,000 workers and approximately 300 to 3,000 drones.

The queen bee is the largest of the bees. She lays up to 2,000 eggs each day and lives for up to five years. She controls what happens in the colony by means of her scents. If her pheromone concentration falls because the colony is too large or the queen is sick, then the workers raise a new queen to form new colony or to replace the queen so-called “super sedure”.

The workers are the smallest of the three types of bees in the colony and also have the shortest life span. They are also female bees, have ovaries and do not lay any eggs. They do the cleaning (1st to 3rd day of life), attend to the brood (4th to 10th day), build honeycombs, guard the entrance hole (11th to 20th day) and collect honey and pollen 21st to the 40th day.

Drones are male bees, and are bulkier and larger than workers. They normally do not live through the winters. In the active season of the colony – when plants are blooming, bees are foraging, and queens are flying to mate – drones are born. Their role is to mate with the queen. At the end of the mating season in July-August, they are exterminated by the workers, which is also called the “massacre of the drones”.