The Difference Between Queen, Drone, and Worker Bees

Learn about the different duties performed by each member of your bee colony.

There are three types of bees in a colony. This includes the queen bee, drone bees, and worker bees. Each type of bee has a unique role in contributing to the hive.

Whether you’re an aspiring apiarist or simply a nature enthusiast, gaining insights into the different types of bees within a colony can deepen your appreciation for their vital role in our ecosystem. Learn about each kind of bee with this guide from Blain’s Farm & Fleet.

Queen Bee

Presenting Her Majesty the Queen! The queen bee is the only adult, mated female that lives in the hive. She is the mother of most, if not all, the bees in her hive.

Her job is specially selected by worker bees when she is a larvae. The worker bees will feed her royal jelly, which makes her become sexually mature.

The queen’s job is to mate with male drone bees and to reproduce. If she is mated by the drones and well fed by the worker bees, the queen can lay about 1,500 eggs a day. The queen bee is also able to select the sex when laying eggs.

If the queen bee dies or is not producing enough eggs, the worker bees must replace her. This is known as “supersedure.”

A beekeeper can force supersedure by clipping one of the queen’s middle or posterior legs. This alerts the worker bees to begin choosing a new queen bee from one of the laid larvae by feeding it royal jelly. You can learn more about replacing your queen with our article on requeening your hive.

There are several tools a beekeeper can use for identifying, and sometimes excluding, the queen bee from the larger drones when inspecting a hive or extracting honey.

Worker Bees

Worker bees are female bees that lack the full reproductive capacity of a queen bee. While all bees of the hive are busy workers, the female worker bees are the ones with the longest resume:

• Sealing honey tightly with beeswax to prevent moisture absorption.
• Feeding younger drone bees.
• Attending to the Queen Bee by grooming and feeding her. They also spread the queen’s special pheromone to other worker bees throughout the hive.
• Honeycomb building.
• Packing pollen into the honeycomb to feed the brood.
• Mortuary duties: When bees and larvae die, they must be removed from the hive to prevent disease and to allow cells to be reused.
• Heating and cooling: When the hive becomes overheated for the bees, worker bees will fly out of the hive to obtain water. They then spread it on the backs of fanning bees. This fanning directs airflow in or out of the hive depending on the need.
• Guarding the hive: Several guard bees will stay in front of the hive entrance, defending it from invaders, such as wasps.
• Once a worker bee reaches 22 to 42 days old, they will start to scout and forage nectar and pollen, traveling up to one and a half miles.

Drone Bees

The drone bee is a male honey bee that is the product of an unfertilized egg. The male drone bees do not have stingers like their sister worker bees, and they do not collect pollen or nectar.

The male’s one purpose is to drift from hive to hive, and mate with a queen bee. Once the male has mated with a queen bee, he dies shortly afterwards, having fulfilling his purpose.

Now that you have met all the bees in your hive, you are ready to get started! You’ll find all the beekeeping supplies you need to take the best care of your beehive at Blain’s Farm & Fleet.

For more guides like this one, check out our Beekeeping Blog.