There are approximately 40,000 worker bees. The workers are all
female, but they can’t have babies. There may be as many as
2000 males or drones. Drones don’t do any work. Only a few
drones gets to be fathers of the babies. All the rest just hang
around. The worker bees feed pollen and honey to the baby larva.
Soon, it spins a little web blanket inside the cell and becomes a
pupa. After 16 to 24 days, a full grown bee climbs out of the
cell. Worker bees do different things depending on how old they
are. They take care of the babies, make wax, build the honeycomb,
clean up the hive, store pollen, make honey, guard the hive, and
collect pollen or nectar. When someone says "busy as a
bee," they are definitely talking about the workers. If a
worker (sterile female) is born in the spring, she probably only
lives 4 or 5 weeks. If she’s born in the fall when
there’s less work to do, she may survive the winter. Drones
(males) are kicked out of the hive when the weather gets cold.
Queens can live for several years. (Text retrieved from http://pelotes.jea.com/honeybee.htm)
