The surprising lessons L&D teams can learn from bees

People Management Article – 31st January 2025 – People Management. The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development

“After a female worker bee hatches and leaves its egg, what comes next is a multifaceted and busy ‘career’ directed by hormonal changes as well as the needs of the hive. In the winter this career will span several months, but during the summer all that hard work will be compressed into a lifespan of just a single short month, on average thirty-four days.

First, as soon as they hatch, the young female worker bees specialise in becoming a housekeeper bee. They are trained by the previous generation of slightly older adult bees to look after all the cells, making sure they are clean and keeping the larvae and the brood warm. They exclusively perform that role for the first few days of their life. They then take time to train the previous cohort of bees that have just hatched to do the same.”