The bee line

A healthy hive houses three castes of honeybees. Each has its own characteristics, roles, and responsibilities.
The industrious worker bee makes up the majority of bees in the hive. Though worker bees are female, they have undeveloped ovaries and do not lay eggs. They do all the chores for the colony, including guarding the hive, attending the queen and foraging.
Drones are male honey bees whose primary job is to fertilize the queen bee. The hive holds relatively few of them, only a few thousand compared with the tens of thousands of worker bees. As winter approaches, the drones are driven out of the hive by the workers.
As her name implies, the queen is the most important bee in the colony. Without a queen, the rest of the colony could not survive. She produces the pheromones that regulate unity in the hive and is the only female honeybee capable of laying eggs. There is one queen per colony.