Chapter 2 · Lesson 8 of 87

Lesson 8: A Worker's Life, Job by Job

From cleaning cells to collecting nectar

Almost every bee you'll ever see is a worker. She does every job in the colony: cleaning, feeding the young, caring for the queen, building comb, cooling and heating the nest, making honey, guarding the door, and collecting nectar, pollen and water.

She doesn't do all of these at once. A worker changes jobs as she gets older, in a fairly predictable order. Scientists call this age-related division of labor. Knowing the order helps you understand what you see when you open a hive.

She starts work right away

A new worker chews her way out of her cell and begins working almost immediately. Her jobs then run roughly in this order:

  1. Cleaning cells. Her first job is cleaning out cells, including the one she came from, so the queen can lay in them again.
  2. Fanning. She fans her wings to move air through the hive, which helps keep the nest at the right temperature and dries nectar into honey.
  3. Feeding larvae: the nurse bee. Young workers have glands in their heads that make brood food (royal jelly). These glands are at their biggest when a bee is about 6 to 12 days old, the peak of her time as a nurse bee. Nurse bees feed the larvae and tend the queen.
  4. Practice flights. She starts making short orientation flights near the hive, learning where home is before she ever forages.
  5. House work. As a house bee she takes nectar and pollen from returning foragers and stores them, builds wax comb, turns nectar into honey, and caps cells.
  6. Guarding the entrance. Guard bees check who comes in and defend the colony.
  7. Foraging: the field bee. The oldest workers become foragers. They collect nectar, pollen, water and propolis (lesson 10). These are the bees you see on flowers.

As a rough guide, one university course describes workers as nurse bees at about 2 to 10 days old, house bees at about 11 to 20 days, and field bees from about 3 weeks on.

The timetable bends to the colony's needs

The order is fairly steady, but the ages aren't fixed. A colony adjusts. For example, bees made sick by a disease such as Nosema tend to start foraging earlier in life and spend less time as nurse bees (lesson 61). When you read that a bee does a job "at 10 days old," treat it as typical, not exact.

How long a worker lives

That short summer life is why a colony needs a steady supply of new brood, and why a queen problem in summer shows up quickly as a shrinking colony.

Workers share food, and information with it

Workers constantly pass food mouth to mouth. This sharing, called trophallaxis, is also how nectar is processed on its way to becoming honey, and how the queen's scent spreads through the colony (lesson 11).

What to remember

Quick check

  1. What's usually a new worker's first job?
  2. Which workers do you see visiting flowers, the youngest or the oldest?
  3. Why do winter bees live so much longer than summer bees?
Show answers

1. Cleaning cells. 2. The oldest: foraging is the last job. 3. Winter bees aren't worn out by foraging and brood rearing; they carry the colony through the winter.

Adapted from: UGA Bee Program, Getting Started: Honey Bee Biology; UF/IFAS Extension, European Honey Bee (EENY568/IN1005); University of Arkansas, Complete Beekeeping Short Course, Part 4: Honey Bee Biology & Behavior; Penn State Extension, An Introduction to Queen Honey Bee Development (Anton & Grozinger, updated 2025) and Nosema Disease of Honey Bees.

Adapted from university Extension sources. Experienced Georgia beekeepers are reviewing these lessons. See something that doesn't match your experience? Tell us.

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