Star Trek: Every Auxiliary Craft Explained
1. Work Bees (And Worker Bees)
Work bees first popped up in The Motion Picture, when they were seen working on the Enterprise at the San Francisco Fleet Yards orbiting Earth.
Work bees were designed as maintenance vehicles for a single pilot. They could carry cargo and had a variety of tools that could be used for repairs or upgrades, along with detachable robotic arms for moving components.
These small ships were also seen working at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards in orbit of Mars, and flying around space stations like Deep Space Nine, carrying out maintenance on docked ships and the station itself.
Some extremely similar vehicles called 'worker bees' appeared in Star Trek: Discovery aboard both the Shenzhou and Discovery. These were likely an earlier model of the standard work bees we've seen before, but it's unclear whether there were any major differences between the two crafts other than their designs. We also saw that the arms of the worker bees in Discovery could be controlled by high-tech gloves worn by the pilot.