Words by Mark Thiessen thiessenphoto | Did you know that National Geographic has honeybee colonies on its roof at our headquarters in Washington, D.C.? Although it’s downtown, three blocks from the White House, the location is great for honeybees. In the spring, they visit the 18 acres of flowering trees at the White House and fly home to Nat Geo HQ with nectar they turn into honey. During the spring and summer, the population for each hive is around 50,000 bees. Yet they all work together as a single superorganism to help the colony thrive. Ninety-five percent of the hive is made up of worker bees, which are all female. The first thing they do when they are born is clean out their honeycomb cell—kind of like making their bed. During their 45-day life span, they’ll have many jobs, among them feeding the growing larva, making honeycomb, keeping the hive clean, feeding the queen, defending the colony, and foraging for nectar and pollen. Drones are the male bees whose only job is to eat a...