How Long Do Honeybees Live?

The life expectancy of honeybees varies depending on the type of bee and the time of year.  

Pictured above, worker bees tending to brood. If you look carefully, you can see some new bees emerging.

Workers: Worker bees are all female and generally have the shortest life of them all.  Worker bees start their work right after they emerge and as they age they move on to foraging and forage until they die. During spring and summer when bees are foraging heavily worker bees live about 5-6 weeks.  During the winter, they can live longer as they are not out foraging.

Pictured above, these are mainly worker bees but there is a drone just about right in the middle of the picture. They are easy to spot as they are larger than worker bees and have some distinct features.

Drones: Drones are male bees and they live a little longer than workers, about two months.  That is, until they successfully mate with a virgin queen and then they die immediately. 

Pictured above, these are mainly worker bees but there is a queen near the middle of the picture and you can see there are attendant bees surrounding and facing her.

Queens: Queens live longer than any other type of honeybee and typically live 2-5 years.  The viability of a queen goes down as she ages, though. Queens only mate once early in their life and then do not mate again.  Sperm is stored in a special sac called a spermethica for later use by the queen.  The queen can lay unfertilized eggs and those will become male drones, but if she uses sperm from her spermethica to fertilize the egg as she lays it then it will become a female worker bee.  While queens can live to be 5 years old, they are often replaced or superseded prior to 5 years as their sperm stores deplete and they slow down or stop laying.