Reviewed by Thomas B. · Last Updated October 6, 2026 · How we review
Worker bees are the colony’s non-reproductive females, and they do nearly every job in the hive: cleaning cells, feeding larvae and the queen, building comb, storing food, cooling the nest, removing the dead, guarding the entrance and foraging. A typical summer worker spends roughly her first three weeks on inside jobs, then forages until she dies, usually at around six weeks old. The order is predictable; the dates are not fixed.
Most guides reprint the same day-by-day chart. We trace its ages back to the research and add what it leaves out: jobs only a minority of workers do, how often a larva is really fed, and how the colony reshuffles its workforce. For the queen and drones, see hive hierarchy and organization.
Key Takeaways
- Typical summer order: cell cleaning (days 1-3), nursing (days 4-12), middle-aged jobs such as comb building, food storage, fanning, undertaking and guarding (days 12-21), then foraging.
- Nurses make larval food in glands in their heads. Worker larvae get the same rich food as queen larvae for about 2.5 days, then rations with more honey and pollen.
- A worker larva is fed about 143 times, about 2 hours in all; a queen larva about 1,600 times.
- Only about 1% of workers act as undertakers at any one time.
- The schedule bends: young bees forage early if foragers are lost, and older bees can return to nursing.
- Winter bees, reared in late summer, can live up to about six months.
Table of Contents
- Worker Bee Jobs by Age
- Nurse Bee Duties
- How Nurse Bees Feed Larvae: Royal Jelly vs Worker Jelly
- Queen Attendants and the Retinue
- Middle-Aged Jobs: Comb, Food, Cooling and Undertaking
- Guard Bee Responsibilities
- Foragers and Scouts
- Why the Schedule Bends
- Winter Bees
- Frequently Asked Questions
- The Bottom Line
Worker Bee Jobs by Age
Scientists call this age polyethism: each worker moves through jobs in a fairly predictable order. The ages below come from studies of marked bees, summarized in Brian R. Johnson’s review in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.
| Stage | Typical age | Main jobs | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cell cleaner | About days 1-3 | Cleans and polishes cells, starting with her own | Brood nest |
| Nurse | About days 4-12 | Feeds larvae, the queen and young adult bees | Brood nest |
| Middle-aged worker | About days 12-21 | Builds comb, receives and stores food, fans, removes the dead, guards | Whole nest and entrance |
| Forager | From about day 21 | Collects nectar, pollen, water and plant resin | Outside |
Penn State Extension puts it simply: three weeks from egg to adult, then about three more weeks before she forages.
In this six-minute UF/IFAS episode, Dr. Jamie Ellis explains that workers and queens come from the same kind of fertilized egg and differ because of their larval diet. He walks through the age sequence from cleaning cells to foraging and notes that workers live about six weeks in summer and six months in winter.
Nurse Bee Duties
Nurse bees are young workers, typically 4 to 12 days old, who stay on the brood comb. Johnson’s review notes they feed not only larvae but also younger and older adult bees, and they form the queen’s retinue.
Their food is a secretion from the hypopharyngeal and mandibular glands in the head. UF/IFAS Extension notes that young brood-tending bees have highly developed hypopharyngeal glands for making the larval diet. Running those glands takes protein, which nurses get by eating stored pollen, so a pollen shortage soon becomes a brood-food shortage.
How Nurse Bees Feed Larvae: Royal Jelly vs Worker Jelly
In the Journal of Insect Science, Arizona State University researchers Osman Kaftanoglu, Timothy Linksvayer and Robert Page summarize the classic data: worker-destined larvae up to about 2.5 days old get the same brood food as queen larvae. After the third day, workers get restricted rations, while queen larvae keep getting abundant royal jelly.
Beekeepers call the later, diluted food modified worker jelly. Madlen Kratz and colleagues (2024) describe it as jelly mixed with honey and pollen, fed until the cell is capped at day 9 of development.
| Worker larva | Queen larva | |
|---|---|---|
| First 2.5 days or so | Rich brood food, same as a queen larva | Royal jelly |
| From day 3 of larval life | Rationed; more honey and pollen mixed in | Royal jelly in abundance |
| Feedings over larval stage | About 143, about 2 hours in total | About 1,600, about 17 hours in total |
| Growth from egg weight | About 900 to 1,100 times | At least 1,500 to 1,700 times |
Figures from Kaftanoglu et al. (2011); the worker count is Martin Lindauer’s (1952).
What about “1,300 visits a day”?
Popular guides repeat a figure of 1,300 but disagree on what it counts: visits to one larva, cells checked by one nurse, or cells fed. We could not trace it to a primary study, so we do not use it. Video work does show that inspections outnumber feedings: in a 2021 PLOS ONE study by Paul Siefert and colleagues, every feeding was preceded by an inspection, and some inspections ended without one. For day-by-day detail, see how honey bee larvae are fed at each stage.
Queen Attendants and the Retinue
Johnson’s review describes nurses forming the queen’s retinue, regulating her behavior by how fast they feed her, and acting as messenger bees that spread her pheromones through the nest. Queen mandibular pheromone signals that a laying queen is present and helps keep workers’ ovaries inactive.
When the queen is lost: laying workers
If a colony stays queenless and cannot rear a replacement, that suppression fades and some workers start laying. Workers never mate, so their eggs are unfertilized and can only become drones. Left alone, the colony dwindles as its workers die off; see whether laying workers can raise a new queen.
Middle-Aged Jobs: Comb, Food, Cooling and Undertaking
From about day 12 to day 21, workers leave the brood. Johnson counts some 15 tasks in this phase; younger middle-aged bees lean toward comb building, older ones toward nectar processing near the entrance.
Building comb
Wax glands under the abdomen produce thin wax scales, which workers chew and shape into comb. UF/IFAS notes that comb builders have reduced brood-food glands but highly developed wax glands. See how worker bees make beeswax.
Receiving and storing food
Nectar receivers take loads from foragers, store them in cells and dry them into honey; others pack pollen near the brood. Nurses do not do this work.
Fanning and carrying water
UF/IFAS says bees hold the brood area near 93°F (34°C). When it gets hotter, workers fan air over droplets of water to cool the nest; fanning also pushes air in and out of the entrance.
Undertaker bees
Undertakers carry dead bees out. University of Illinois research by Stephen Trumbo, Zhi-Yong Huang and Gene Robinson, reported by ScienceDaily, found only about 1% of workers do this at any one time. They are middle-aged, usually do it for a day or two, and carry corpses 50 to 100 meters away before dropping them.
“We didn’t find any evidence for learning for this particular task.”
Guard Bee Responsibilities
Guards are middle-aged workers, mostly in their third week, who screen arrivals at the entrance. Like all workers, they are female.
- Check identity. Guards touch incoming bees with their antennae and compare their odor with the colony’s own.
- Stop intruders. Robber bees and wasps are grabbed, pushed out or stung.
- Raise the alarm. A guard that stings releases alarm pheromone that recruits more defenders.
Guarding was long thought to be done by only a small share of workers. But a 2012 University of Guelph study by Peter Unger and Ernesto Guzman-Novoa saw 41% of marked bees still alive at observation time guarding, with differences between strains. For how guards recognize nestmates, read how bees detect hive intruders.
Foragers and Scouts
Foraging is usually the last job. Johnson notes that foragers stop working inside the nest and collect nectar, pollen, water and plant resin. Most carry pollen or nectar on a given trip but collect both over a career.
Range depends on bloom. In a classic forest study, Kirk Visscher and Thomas Seeley read a colony’s waggle dances and found a median foraging distance of 1.7 km (about 1 mile), with 95% of foraging within 6 km (about 3.7 miles). See how far bees travel to forage and how honey bees allocate foraging roles.
Some foragers scout for new food, and during swarming, scouts search out nest sites. Foraging wears bees out, which is why summer workers rarely live much past six weeks.
Why the Schedule Bends
“There is a fair amount of flexibility in the system, and not every bee will progress through the tasks in the most common order.”
UF/IFAS gives two examples: if many foragers are killed, for instance by pesticides, younger bees forage sooner; if brood disease cuts the number of emerging bees, some older bees return to younger bees’ jobs.
Foragers give off ethyl oleate, a chemical that slows the development of younger bees; when foragers die, there is less of it and young bees mature faster. Meanwhile, newly emerged bees crowd older nurses off the brood: Johnson notes a brood comb holds about 6,000 cells but has room for only about 2,000 adult bees. Rising juvenile hormone helps switch glands on and off as jobs change. More in aging and role changes in bees and how bees allocate hive resources.
Winter Bees
Penn State Extension says colonies start rearing winter bees in late summer, in August and September in the northeastern United States. They live up to six months, against six weeks for summer bees, and have larger fat bodies.
Johnson’s review notes winter bees are generalists: all help keep the cluster warm, they nurse when brood rearing restarts in mid to late winter, and some forage at over 280 days old. Penn State advises checking and treating for Varroa mites while winter bees are being reared. See honey bee lifespan.
“A healthy population of winter bees is essential to colony winter survival.”
For the body parts behind these jobs, from wax glands to the pollen basket, see honeybee anatomy.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the different types of worker bees?
They are stages in one bee’s life: cell cleaner, nurse, middle-aged worker (comb builder, food storer, fanner, undertaker or guard) and forager. Winter bees are a long-lived seasonal form.
What do worker bees not do?
They do not mate, so they cannot lay fertilized eggs. With a healthy queen present they normally do not lay at all.
What is the job of a nurse bee?
Nurses, usually 4 to 12 days old, feed larvae with secretions from glands in their heads and also feed the queen and young adult bees.
What do guard bees do?
They check the odor of bees arriving at the entrance, repel robbers and wasps, and release alarm pheromone when the colony is threatened.
What gender are guard bees?
Female. All workers, including guards, are female. Drones have no sting and do no hive work.
How long do worker bees live?
About six weeks in summer. Winter bees can live up to about six months.
Can a worker bee become a queen?
Only as a very young larva. A female larva fed royal jelly from an early age can become a queen; an adult worker cannot.
The Bottom Line
Treat the age chart as a typical pattern, not a timetable: the colony moves workers to wherever the need is greatest.
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