Caged queens can be kept for a week to 10 days, and maybe one or two more days. However, queens lose quality when they are prevented from putting on for extended periods, and the quality of their pheromones decreases, so you should always keep the storage time as short as possible. Honey bees are probably the most well-known social bees. Female workers live only about six weeks on average, and drones die immediately after mating. Queen bees, however, are quite long-lived compared to other insects or even other bees.
A queen bee has an average productive lifespan of two to three years, during which time it can lay up to 2000 eggs per day. Over its lifetime, it can easily produce more than 1 million offspring. Although their productivity will decline as they age, the queen honey bee can live for up to five years. The queen of honey bees has a long and productive lifespan. It usually lives between two and three years, but it can live up to five or more, if it is healthy.
The lifespan of a queen honey bee lasts between one year and five years. A queen bumblebee lives only one year. The lifespan of honey bee queens and bumblebees depends on their ability to produce offspring; they die when they can no longer lay fertile eggs. This is one of the best general books I have found about bees. Check it out if you want to learn more.
The other half of the colony remains in place, raising a new queen who will mate and lay eggs to replenish its population. As you grow older and start to lay fewer eggs, worker bees will decide that their time is coming to an end. Several worker bees will leave the nest with their old queen and then find a new place to create a new colony. A queen bee can live for 3 to 4 years (sometimes longer), but is usually replaced before then.
At least 500 species of stingless bees are known, so the life expectancy of stingless queen bees varies. Queens, who are responsible for producing and laying eggs, live an average of two to three years, but are known to live five years. As the queen ages and her productivity declines, worker bees prepare to replace her by feeding royal jelly to several young larvae. The bumblebee queen will only survive a year at most, and much of this time will be in hibernation.
The lifespan of a honey bee depends on several variables, but the most important is its function in the hive. The most important role is that of the queen bee, because it is solely responsible for keeping the colony functioning by producing new bees. If the reigning queen does not return to her hive after a mating flight, the queen's larvae are reared until one can take the place of the missing queen.
