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The larvae, kept warm by the queen, are full grown in about ten days.

Each now makes a tough, papery cocoon and pupates.

After another two weeks, the first young emerge, four to eight small daughters that begin to play the role of worker bees, collecting pollen and nectar in the field and caring for the new young generation while the queen retires to a life of egg laying.

The first worker bees do not mate or lay eggs ; ;

males and mating females do not emerge until later in the season.

The broods of workers that appear later tend to be bigger than the first ones, probably because they are better fed.

By the middle of the summer, many of the larvae apparently receive such a good diet that it is `` optimal '', and it is then that young queens begin to appear.

Simultaneously, males or drones are produced, mostly from the unfertilized eggs of workers, although a few may be produced by the queen.

The young queens and drones leave the nest and mate, and after a short period of freedom, the fertilized young queens will begin to dig in for the winter.

It is an amazing fact that in some species this will happen while the summer is still in full swing, for instance, in August.

The temperature then is still very high.

At the old nest, the queen will in the early fall cease to lay the fertilized eggs that will produce females.

As a result, the proportion of males ( which leave the nest ) increases, and eventually the old colony will die out completely.

The nest itself, the structure that in some cases housed about 2,000 individuals when the season was at its peak, is now rapidly destroyed by the scavenging larvae of certain beetles and moths.