The essential events and occurrences in a honeybee colony from February till September:

Very often the landscape is covered with snow when the queen starts laying eggs.  Thereby the colony can already rely on a large group of collector bees when the first flowers come out and spring arrives.  Once the colony has grown in numbers, it starts building queen cells to produce young queens in the late spring/early summer and drones appear, deriving from non-fertilized eggs.  Drones and queens become partners who mate on the nuptial flight of the virgin queen.  Usually the old queen already leaves her old colony with a swarm already before this event.  The "bien" (an old German expression among beekeepers of the integral honeybee colony, regarding it as life form with a special character) has thus split up into two colonies.  It has reproduced through separation.