It's all about the Queen

Worker honeybees are all females and are the only bees most people ever see. They forage for food and build and protect the hive, among many other societal functions. All honeybees are social and cooperative insects. A hive's inhabitants are generally divided into three types.

There is only one queen per hive. The queen is the only bee with fully developed ovaries. A queen bee can live for 3-5 years. The queen mates only once with several male (drone) bees, and will remain fertile for life. She lays up to 2000 eggs per day. Fertilized eggs become female (worker bees) and unfertilized eggs become male (drone bees). When she dies or becomes unproductive, the other bees will "make" a new queen by selecting a young larva and feeding it a diet of "royal jelly". For queen bees, it takes 16 days from egg to emergence, Worker bees 21 days and Drone bees 24 days.

Royal Jelly is the substance that turns an ordinary bee into the Queen Bee. It is made of pollen which is chewed up and mixed with a chemical secreted from a gland in the nurse bee's heads. This milk like substance is fed to all the larvae for the first two days of their lives, but queens swim in it their entire grow period. The larvae chosen to become a queen continue to eat only royal jelly. The queen grows one and a half times larger than the ordinary bee, and is capable of laying up to two thousand eggs a day. The Queen Bee lives forty times longer than the bees on a regular diet. There is no difference between a queen bee and a worker bee in the larval stage. The only factor that is different between them is that a developing queen bee continues to eat only royal jelly. (Gecographic) (Cassino)

 Bibliography

Cassino, Mark. http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/honey_bee.htm. n.d.

Gecographic, National. http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/honeybee/. n.d.