From sunrise foraging to a night spent fanning the brood
Foragers wait for the hive to warm above roughly 12 to 13 degrees Celsius before flight muscles can work efficiently. On cool mornings, bees may be seen shivering just inside the entrance to warm their flight muscles.
A single foraging trip typically covers a radius of one to two kilometres from the hive, though bees can travel considerably further if forage is scarce. A bee will visit dozens to hundreds of flowers on a single trip, favouring one flower species per trip, a behaviour called flower constancy that improves pollination efficiency for the plant.
Nectar is carried in a specialised internal 'honey stomach' and pollen is packed into stiff hairs on the hind legs called pollen baskets, or corbiculae. Back at the hive, a forager passes her nectar load to a house bee through mouth to mouth exchange, a process called trophallaxis, which also spreads colony-wide chemical information.
Between trips, worker bees rest for short periods, but a hive is rarely fully still, other workers continue fanning to cure honey, nursing larvae, and maintaining temperature around the clock, including through the night.
A worker bee born in summer typically lives only five to six weeks, worn out by the physical demands of flight, while workers born in autumn, who spend the winter clustered rather than foraging, can live several months.