You have entered the home of the honey bee. Here you will learn a little about the life cycle of a bee.
The queen bee lays all of the eggs. She can lay around 2,000 eggs per day! A queen's average lifespan is one to two years though some queens have lived five to seven years. That's a LOT of eggs!
The eggs are laid in a cell that is shaped like a hexagon. A bee's egg stage lasts for three days, no matter what type of bee is being raised - queen, worker, or drone.
The length of the larvae stage changes for each type of bee. The larvae stage ranges between five and seven days.
When the larvae is ready to enter the pupal stage, the cell it was raised in is capped with wax. The length of the pupal stage also varies with the type of bee that is being raised. The pupal stage lasts from eight to fifteen days.
Adult bees all have very different life spans depending on what role they are born to. Queens generally live the longest. Worker bees live from six weeks to five months depending on what time of year they are born. Drone bees will only live for about five to seven weeks.