The modular approach has also made the work bee extremely easy to upgrade - all updated systems have been designed to fit the same physical requirements, so it is literally a matter of pulling an old component out and putting the improved one in place. No component swap requires more than three persons, and typically the total maintanence work required by the bees is so low that a three person crew can perform all routine maintanence on a group of fifteen bees.

The upgrade program for the work bees has been generally limited to gradual imporvements rather than large leaps. Over their hundred year history virtually every part of the bees have been replaced many times over. The original design had a duotronic flight computer, an electro-optical passive scanner, and a hull constructed of carbon fibre plated with foamed aluminium alloys - a very old material which nevertheless met the strength and and density requirements. Today the bees exist in many variations according to how modern their equipment fit is; a typical work bee of the 2370's will have a small isolinear flight computer, a short range navigational laser radar, and a shell comprised of monotanium laminated with carbon tetride. The life support systems have been replaced several times as older systems reach the end of their operational life, or as newer safety standards come into force. Some have compared this rolling refit program to the proverbial thirty year old axe which has had four new heads and six new handles!

The work bee can carry out a multitude of tasks; there are two manipulator waldoes which can be tipped with a wide variety of tools for all kinds of construction and maintanence work on Starships and space stations. At the rear of the hull are standardized grapple points which can be used to attach various configurations of cargo containers, or alternately can be fitted with a tractor beam unit which can be used to tow small craft such as shuttles - a task the work bee would normally undertake only in emergencies. Some thought was given to designing drop tanks with extra fuel and life support supplies to extend the range of the bee severalfold, but although this was perfectly feasible there was never any real need for such an improvement and it was abandoned before serious development work was authorized.

Some thought has been given lately to replacing the work bee with a totally new design. However, with the start of the Dominion war Starfleet is engaged on shipbuilding on a massive scale. It is the measure of this remarkable little craft that, faced with such a huge demand for space-based construction work, Starfleet at once cancelled all development of a replacement and boosted production of the standard work bee instead. Given this level of confidence, it seems that the work bee may well be in service another century hence.