Honeybees are Old World insects brought here by early colonists. The bees are prized because they produce about twice as much honey as they can use, allowing people to harvest the sweet excess. Honeybees look somewhat like the native yellowjacket yellow with black stripes but honeybees are fuzzy and far less likely to sting. When the queen dies, the colony nurtures more queens by feeding larvae a concoction called royal jelly, said Bruce Thomp-son, a beekeeper in Egg Harbor City. She stores enough sperm from this one flight to fertilize eggs her whole life.
Drones are the male bees and their sole function is to mate with the queen, after which they die.
In winter, the surviving drones die when the workers shut them out of the hive. The workers are sterile females that work themselves to death in three to five weeks. Workers feed the young larvae and tend the hive and queen during the first half of their adult lives. Using wax secreted from their abdo-mens, they make the hexagonal honeycombs where developing bees live or that hold honey and pollen. The last weeks of their lives are spent gathering pollen and nectar from flowers.