Worker bee

Although the life span of a worker bee is longer than that of a drone, it is generally only a few months, and rarely can survive a year. The life span is 1-2 months in summer and can be up to 6-8 months over autumn and winter. The lifespan of summer worker bees can increase to 6 months if placed in a colony that doesn't have a queen.[2]

Honey bee workers keep the hive temperature uniform in the critical brood area (where new bees are raised). This is in the centre frames of the brood box. Workers must maintain the hive's brood chamber at 34.4 °C to incubate the eggs. If it is too hot, they collect water and deposit it around the hive, then fan air through with their wings causing cooling by evaporation. If it is too cold, they cluster together to generate body heat. This is an example of homeostasis.

The life of all honey bees starts as an egg, which is laid by the queen in the bottom of a wax cell in the brood area of a hive. A worker egg hatches after three days into a larva. Nurse bees feed it royal jelly at first, then pollen and honey for six days. It then becomes an inactive pupa.

During its 14 days as a pupa, sealed in a capped cell, it grows into a worker (female) bee, emerging on the 21st day. In most species of honey bees, workers do everything but lay eggs and mate, though Cape honey bee workers can lay eggs. They build the comb from wax extruded from glands under their abdomen. When fully developed, they perform a number of tasks (see below).

When a colony absconds (all bees leave the colony) or divides and so creates a swarm and then establishes a new colony, the bees must regress in their behaviour in order to establish the first generation in the new home. The most urgent task will be the creation of new beeswax for comb. Comb is much more difficult to come by than honey and requires about six times the energy to create. A newly hived swarm on bars (top bar hive) or empty foundation (Langstroth box hive) will often be fed sugar water, which they can then rapidly consume to create wax for new comb. (Mature hives cannot be so fed as they will store it in place of nectar, although a wintering hive may have to be fed if insufficient honey was left by the beekeeper.)

In most common bee species, worker bees are infertile due to enforced altruistic kin selection,[7] and thus never reproduce. Workers are nevertheless considered female for anatomical and genetic reasons. Genetically, a worker bee does not differ from a queen bee and can even become a laying worker bee, but in most species will produce only male (drone) offspring. Whether a larva becomes a worker or a queen depends on the kind of food it is given after the first three days of its larval form.

The workers perform different behavioural tasks in the colony that cause them to be exposed to different local environments. The worker gut microbial community composition is found to be associated with the behavioural tasks they perform, therefore also with the local environment they are exposed to[8] and the environmental landscape is shown to affect the gut microbial community (gut microbiota composition) of honey bees.[9]

The stinger of a black honeybee torn off its body and attached to a protecting dress

The worker bee's stinger is a complex organ that allows a bee to defend itself and the hive from most mammals. Attacking bees aim for the face by sensing regions with high levels of carbon dioxide (like mosquitos). Bee stings against mammals and birds typically leave the stinger embedded in the victim due to the structure of flesh and the stinger's barbs. In this case, the venom bulb stays with the stinger and continues to pump. The bee will die after losing its stinger, as the removal of the stinger and the venom bulb damages or removes other internal organs as well.

The barbs on the stinger will not catch on most animals besides mammals and birds, which means that such animals can be stung many times by the same bee.

Bee art in Manchester's Northern Quarter

The worker bee is a symbol of Manchester, England.[10][11] It was adopted as a motif for Manchester during the Industrial Revolution, at a time when Manchester was taking a leading role in new forms of mass production, and symbolises Mancunians' hard work during this era and Manchester being a hive of activity in the 19th century.[12][13]

Following the Manchester Arena attack on Monday 22 May 2017, the bee emblem gained popularity as a public symbol of unity against terrorism, appearing on protest banners and graffiti.

The song "Worker Bees", by Canadian rock band Billy Talent (from their 2006 album, Billy Talent II), criticizes the actions of the U.S military during their ongoing invasion of middle east; comparing it to the hive mind mentality of worker bees.

There are many types of eusocial bees, including bumble bees, stingless bees, some orchid bees, and many species of sweat bees, native to all continents except for Antarctica, that have workers. Workers in these other bee lineages do not show significant morphological differences from queens, other than coloration or a smaller average body size, though they are often quite different in their behavior from queens, and may or may not lay eggs. See the respective articles for these lineages for details.

• The Honey Files: A Bee's Life, A Teaching Guide, National Honey Board, 2001
• Organization of a bee colony, FAO