One organism

A colony is not a swarm of individuals doing their own thing, it is one organism spread across fifty thousand bodies, and one queen lays every egg that becomes one of them. From that single egg, a queen emerges in 16 days, a worker in 21, a drone in 24, the same three numbers hold across every hive you will manage.

Diet decides which she becomes: three days of royal jelly for everyone, then workers and drones shift to a coarser pollen mix while a future queen stays on royal jelly alone.

A summer worker lives about six weeks and wears out foraging; a bee reared in late summer is built differently, carrying fat reserves that let her live six months through winter.