Life cycle of honeybee is very informative to understand their social behavior, communication and developmental aspects. Honey and wax are valuable products of0 honeybees. Besides, they also help in pollination of various crops. Thus, it is necessary to learn about bee colony and their development 

Life cycle: Honey bees are holometabolous insects that have four different stages of development.

Eggs : Queen starts laying three to four days after mating. She lays as many as 2000 eggs in a day. Eggs are creamy white in color and banana shaped. Eggs hatch in 3 days.

Larvae: Known as grubs, they have no legs and eyes. All grubs feed on 'royal jelly' for the first 3 days. Thereafter, workers and drones are given 'bee bread'. This stage remains 7 days for drone, 5 days for queen and worker.

Pupae: On about 9th day, cells containing grubs are sealed with a wax cap. Pupalstage passes inside the sealed chamber. Grub secretes a thin silken cocoon around itself. This stage lasts 8 days for queen, 13 days for worker, and 14 days for drone.

 Adults : They come out from the cell by making hole through the cap. They are differentiated into three different castes.

Queen: She is bigger in size than drones and workers. Queen is the only fertile female in a hive, hatched form fertile eggs. Her grub stage is specially fed on royal jelly. Her duty is to lay eggs and regenerate the colony.

Drones: They are intermediate in size. They develop parthenogenetically from the unfertilized eggs. They fertilize queen and may sometimes regulate the temperature inside the hive.

Workers: They are the smallest members of the colony, coming out of fertile eggs, but unable to reproduce. Workers possess various structures in their legs such as comb, pollen press and pollen basket. They perform various activities, like secretion of wax and comb foundation, cleaning of cells in which queen lays eggs, feeding the queen and grubs, collecting pollen and nectar, producing honey, regulating temperature and guarding hive against robber bees.