A GUIDE TO

Identifying What’s Inside

a Honey Be ehive
Step 1 - Adult Bees
There are three different kinds of bees inside a honey beehive. They are the queen,
worker and drone. Here’s how you can tell the difference between them.

WORKER BEE
• Makes up over 90% of the beehive population. If you
see a bee inside a hive, chances are, it’s a worker bee.
• The smallest bee in the hive
• Can sting

DRONE BEE
• 50% larger than the worker bee
• Bean shaped, with a round bottom (because they have
no stinger)
• Very large eyes
• Makes up less than 10% of the bee population.

QUEEN BEE
• Usually only one per beehive (but sometimes two!)
• 50% larger than the worker bees
• Often darker in color
• Long and narrow
• May have no stripes or just a few stripes at the bottom

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Step 2 - Babies
Baby bees are called brood. They develop in a cell within the honeycomb and hatch
as a full-grown, adult bee. These are the three stages to the baby bees’ development
before hatching.

EGGS
• Day 1-3, a baby bee is an egg
• Eggs are the shape of a grain of rice, but
much smaller

LARVAE
• The egg hatches to a white worm. We call
these worms larvae.

PUPAE
• The final stage before a bee hatches
• You cannot see the bee, it is behind a thin
layer of beeswax
• We call this a capped cell

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Step 3 - Food
Inside the hive you will see food stored inside cells of honeycomb. The three different
kinds of food are honey, nectar and bee bread.

NECTAR
• Bees gather nectar from flowers and put it
in the honeycomb cells. Bees then turn the
nectar into honey.
• Nectar will never have a cap over it

HONEY
• Once the nectar is turned into honey, the cell
is capped.
• When honey is ready for harvest, it will have
a caping over the cell like in the photo to the
left.

BEE BREAD
• Pollen is gathered and mixed with nectar to
make bee bread.
• Bee bread is protein rich food fed to baby
bees.
• It can vary in color but is usually a shade of
yellow, orange or red.
• The easiest way to tell the difference beween
bee bread and nectar or honey is by it’s consistency. Bee bread is a solid substance
and nectar and honey are liquid.

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A Tough One
It can be hard to tell what’s going on inside a cell if there is a cap over it. In the
photo below, there’s both honey and pupae. Both have a capping over them. How
can you tell which is which? You’ll notice that the cap over cells with honey inside
is bumpy and uneven. The area with pupae is very flat. You can also see a definite
hexagon-shaped cap over these cells.

honey

pupae
(capped baby bees)

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More About Babies
It’s hard to tell the difference between a baby worker, queen and drone when they’re
just an egg or larvae, but once they are a pupae, you can identify the type of bee that
will be hatching soon fairly easily.

WORKER BEE PUPAE

• 90-100% of the pupae in the hive
• Hexagon-shaped cells with a flat capping

DRONE BEE PUPAE

• 10% or less of the overall hive pupae
• Slightly larger size cell than the worker pupae
• Dome-shaped cap over the cell

QUEEN BEE PUPAE

• Called queen cells
• Similar in shape to a peanut shell, but smaller
• Hang off of the honeycomb
• Considerably larger than worker bee and
drone cells

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That’s it!
You now know more about identifying what’s inside a beehive than a lot of first year
beekeepers. Keep a copy of this guide in your inspection book to help you during
your first few months checking your bees.

Don’t be too hard on yourself if you can’t spot everything right away, this stuff takes
time. Here’s your first practise test.

Can you spot the queen, worker bees, and capped brood? (The answer is on the next
page)

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Answer:

queen bee

worker bee pupae

Every bee in this photo is a worker bee except for the bee that is circled, she’s
the queen!

When you’re ready to learn more about bees and beekeeping, take a look at
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