Honey bees

Honeybee hives provide us humans with honey and beeswax. All honeybees are social and cooperative insects. A hive's inhabitants are generally divided into three types. Workers are the only bees that most people ever see. These bees are females that are not sexually developed. Workers forage for food (pollen and nectar from flowers), build and protect the hive, clean, circulate air by beating their wings, and perform many other social functions. The queen's job is to lay the eggs that will spawn the hive's next generation of bees. Male bees are called drones, the third class of honeybee. Bees live on stored honey and pollen all winter, and cluster into a ball to conserve warmth. Larvae are fed from the stores during this season and, by spring, the hive is swarming with a new generation of bees.