Home▸Animals & Their World▸The Life of a Worker Bee: From Egg to Forager in 21 Days and Beyond

🐝 The Life of a Worker Bee: From Egg to Forager in 21 Days and Beyond

Slide through a worker honeybee's entire life — egg, larva, pupa, then a career that runs cell-cleaner, nurse, builder, guard and finally forager — inside a 3D hive cutaway.

Animals & Their World3DModerate60 FPS

A single worker bee's life, laid out as a 3D hive cutaway: an egg at the centre hatches into a larva, seals into a pupa, and emerges around day 21 into a career that moves outward — cell cleaner, nurse, builder, guard, and finally forager.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

Temporal polyethylism: a worker bee's job is set by her age, not a fixed caste, and the whole colony's division of labour emerges from thousands of bees each following the same age-based schedule.

🎮 How to Use

Drag the age slider to watch one bee develop and change jobs. Raise colony stress to see precocious foraging — young bees skipping ahead when the hive is short of foragers — and toggle the population view to see every role at once.

💡 Did You Know?

A summer worker bee often lives only five to six weeks in total, and typically spends her final one to three weeks as a forager — the most physically demanding and dangerous job of her life.

⚙ Under the hood

Slide through a worker honeybee's entire life — egg, larva, pupa, then a career that runs cell-cleaner, nurse, builder, guard and finally forager — inside a 3D hive cutaway.

beeshoneyhivelifecyclepollinationnatureThree.js

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install