Canadian Thistle and Honey Bee

apini apis, is a very interesting insect.

from wilkipedia:

a colony of honey bees generally contains one queen bee, a fertile female; seasonally up to a few thousand drone bees or fertile males; and a large seasonally variable population of sterile female worker bees. details vary among the different species of honey bees, but common features include: eggs are laid singly in a cell in a wax honeycomb, produced and shaped by the worker bees. larvae are initially fed with royal jelly produced by worker bees, later switching to honey and pollen. the exception is a larva fed solely on royal jelly, which will develop into a queen bee. the larva undergoes several moltings before spinning a cocoon within the cell, and pupating. drones hatch from unfertilized eggs, females (queens and worker bees) hatch from fertilized eggs. the queen actually can choose to fertilize the egg she is laying, usually depending on what cell she is laying in.

young worker bees clean the hive and feed the larvae.when their royal jelly producing glands begin to atrophy, they begin building comb cells. they progress to other within-colony tasks as they become older, such as receiving nectar and pollen from foragers, and guarding the hive. later still, a worker takes her first orientation flights and finally leaves the hive and typically spends the remainder of her life as a forager.

worker bees cooperate to find food and use a pattern of "dancing" (known as the bee dance or waggle dance) to communicate information regarding resources with each other; this dance varies from species to species, but all living species of apis exhibit some form of the behavior. if the resources are very close to the hive, they may also exhibit a less specific dance commonly known as the "round dance". honey bees also perform tremble dances which recruit receiver bees to collect nectar from returning foragers .

virgin queens go on mating flights away from their home colony, and mate with multiple drones before returning. the drones die in the act of mating. colonies are established not by solitary queens, as in most bees, but by groups known as "swarms", which consist of a mated queen and a large contingent of worker bees. this group moves en masse to a nest site that has been scouted by worker bees beforehand. once they arrive, they immediately construct a new wax comb and begin to raise new worker brood. this type of nest founding is not seen in any other living bee genus, though there are several groups of vespid wasps which also found new nests via swarming (sometimes including multiple queens). also, stingless bees will start new nests with large numbers of worker bees, but the nest is constructed before a queen is escorted to the site, and this worker force is not a true "swarm".