The tracked bee's job schedule (temporal polyethylism) uses the same age thresholds as the 3D version: cell-cleaner → nurse → builder/food-handler → guard → forager, all pulled earlier under colony stress. This 2D companion adds a second, independent layer: a steady-state age-structured demographic model that turns the egg-laying rate and stress into an actual headcount per role, using two textbook population-ecology tools:
Little's Law: standing stock L = λ · W
Survivorship: S(a) = e^(−μ·a) (piecewise μ before/after forager onset)
Role headcount: N_emerge · ∫ S(a) da over that role's age window
Eggs are laid at rate λ (the slider). A fixed 21-day development with 85% brood survival sets how many bees emerge as adults per day. From there, non-forager adults die at a low background rate μₙ ≈ 1%/day, but once a bee crosses into foraging its mortality jumps to μf ≈ 5.5%/day (stress raises μf further — precocious foragers are younger and less experienced). Integrating the resulting exponential survivorship curve over each role's age window gives the standing population in that role — exactly how ecologists estimate stock sizes from a flow rate and a residence time.
- Bee age / Colony stress — drive the single tracked bee's stage and job, exactly like the 3D hive cutaway.
- Queen egg-laying rate — the λ input to the colony model; realistic queens range roughly 300–2,000 eggs/day across the season.
- Population bars — the resulting standing headcount per role, recomputed live from the formulas above.