The life of all honeybees starts as an egg, about the size of a comma “,” 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 3 days into a larva. Nurse bees feed it royal jelly at first, then pollen & honey for 6 days. It then becomes an inactive pupa.The honey comb has hexagon cells on both sides of a vertical central wall. As shown in the photo, these cells are inclined upward, primarily to retain liquid nectar and honey. (This insert comes from Bee Basics by Dr. Richard Iacobuddi.)

The nurse bee is a very young bee, 3 days old, and she is the one to make the royal jelly. This is what she feeds the young bees for a day then she will feed them beebread until they are sealed in their cells.

One of her jobs in the brood nest is to make sure the babies are kept warm, not hot. If too hot, she, along with other nurse bees will fan the babies to cool them down. 94-96 degrees F is the ideal temperature for the brood.

The nurse bees are also the queen’s attendants. They see that she is fed, groomed, and they even dispose of her waste. While grooming her, they receive some of her pheromones and while feeding the other workers and drones, they pass some of this queens scent to them. This is how the colony knows that the queen is still alive and laying eggs. This pheromone has a calming effect on the colony as a whole and the bees keep on doing what they do for the betterment of the colony.

Now that the little house bee is older, it is time to move on to become a cook.