When new queens are produced in hives in late spring, the old queen departs with a swarm of workers to establish a new colony. The also raise the young, clean the hive, build new honeycomb and defend the hive from attack. This is why they are called workers. Workers give off pheromones signaling when the hive is under attack and when to gather together. The third kind of bee is the drone.
Drones are the only male bees in the hive.
They are large, fat and lazy. They cannot collect nector, feed brood, sting attackers or even clean the hive. They exist only for the possibility of mating with the queen. The life cycle of a worker bee is very short. It takes about 30 days from the time that an egg is laid until a mature worker emerges from the pupae.