Royal jelly is a secretion generated from the glands of young workers. Worker larvae are nourished by it during their first six days of existence, and drones eight, while the queen gets it until she is fully grown. The first thing a new queen will do upon emergence from her cell is deliver a death sting to all the other larval queens. The rest of the drones are then put out of the hive to starve. The queen returns to the hive and begins her job of laying over a thousand eggs a day.
Honeybees are native to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
In Ancient Greece, honeybees were associated with a famous oracle. The regular god of prophecy was Apollo, who presided over the greatest of Greek oracles, at Delphi. Apollo gave his tricky brother, Hermes, a piece of the action on a smaller shrine farther down the slopes of the same mountain, Mt. Parnassus, where the prophecy was given by three honeybee-maidens, all sisters.