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As we celebrate Labor Day, let's also celebrate the honey bees: the queens, worker bees (females) and drones (males). 

They take no vacations, no holidays, and no breaks, and receive no overtime pay or retirement pensions.  

The queen takes no maternity leave. In peak season, she will lay 1000 to 2000 eggs a day.  

The worker bees basically do all the work to support the colony. They perform such age-related duties as nurse maids, nannies, royal attendants, builders, architects, foragers, dancers, honey tenders, pollen packers, propolis or "glue" specialists, air conditioning and heating technicians, guards, and undertakers. 

You'll never hear them complain:

•  "You're not carrying your share of the load!"
• "You're eating way too much honey!"
• "The queen likes you best!"
• "You are a horrible dancer! Get off the dance floor!"
• "Some guard you are! You let that yellowjacket and wax moth in!"

The drones have one job to do: mate with a virgin queen (in flight). And then they die--or as the late Eric Mussen, UC Extension apiculturist emeritus and a longtime member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty, would add: "They die with a smile on their face."

If the drones do not mate, their sisters will kick them out of the hive in the fall. They don't want more mouths to feed to deplete their food resources.

But life is short for the foraging worker bees.  When they eclose in the spring and summer, they live five to weeks. And, if they encounter birds, praying mantids and spiders or pesticides--much, much shorter.

"But I don't want to leave the hive and forage--it's too dangerous," said no worker bee ever.