↵ The honey bee is a social insect. It lives in large colonies called hives or combs. The hive consists of about 40,000 and 100,000 bees showing a highly organized division of labour. Bees are polymorphic consist of three types of bees i.e. queen workers and drones.
1. Queen: There will be only one queen in the nest or hive. It lay about 1500 to 2000 eggs in a day. During its life span of about 3 years, a queen lays about 1.5 to 2.0 million eggs. It lays two types of eggs - fertilized and unfertilized eggs. From fertilized eggs, queen and workers are developed and from unfertilized eggs, only drones are developed.
2. Workers: These are sterile bees smaller in size and perform various functions like a collection of pollen grains, production of beeswax, from a new hive, clean the hive, keeps the comb cool, and defend the members.
3. Drones: These are fertile male members and intermediate-sized. Their main function is to copulate with the queen.
The females are diploid and have 32 chromosomes while males are haploid, i.e., having 16 chromosomes. This type of sex determination is called a haplodiploid sex-determination system and has special characteristic features such as the males produce sperms by mitosis.
