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Bee Facts

Bees are part of a group of insects known as Hymenoptera which also includes ants, wasps and sawflies. Bees are found on every continent of the Earth except Antarctica. There are about 25,000 different species of bees around the world. 4000 of those species live in the United States.

The bees in the United States were brought here when Europeans migrated here in the 1600 and 1700s. Honey bees and bumblebees are probably the best known. Bees are a very beneficial insect that is necessary for the pollination of many plants.


Bees live in communities known as colonies. Sometimes they build their hives in trees or abandoned rodent holes. Some kinds of bees actually dig holes into the ground to live or make their homes in small spaces in fences or rocks. People have kept bees and used their honey since ancient times. In modern days, people raise huge bee farms by providing a space especially for the bees to build their hives and then they harvest the wax and the honey to sell.

The Queen, the Drones, and the Workers

Honey bees and bumblebees have very organized communities called colonies. Each hive has only one queen. She became a queen when her larvae body was selected out of all the other larvae and she was fed something called royal jelly – a substance secreted by the worker bees that care for the larvae. Her body is now larger than all of the other types of bees. Her only job is to lay eggs which starts in the spring and can continue until fall. She lives to be about five years old. Queens rarely leave the nest.

The drones are the only males in the hives and do no work except feed themselves. Their only job is to mate with the queen. Then they die. After the egg-laying season is over, those that didn’t mate are forced to leave the hive.




Bee Anatomy

Bees do not have bones. They have an exoskeleton; a hard outer shell that gives them structure, protection and support. The exoskeleton is covered in several kinds of hair. Like other insects, the body of a bee is divided into three body regions. They have a head with a pair of antennae and five eyes. Three of the eyes are simple eyes and work similar to our eyes. The other two are compound eyes and each has 150 seeing parts. A proboscis is a tube like a straw which allows them to collect nectar. The thorax is between the head and the abdomen. The thorax is similar to the chest of a human. They have four wings; two in the front and two in the back. The arrangement of the wings gives them special flying ability. Their legs have hairs that act like a pollen carrying basket. They have a honey stomach for storing the nectar that they collect until they return to the hive. At the very end of the abdomen is the stinger which is attached to very strong muscles and the venom sac.

bee closeup

Making Honey

When flowers begin to bloom in the spring, the worker honey bees are attracted to them because of color and fragrance. They love to drink the nectar that the flowers contain. Their hive is made of little rooms or combs. The nectar is deposited in the combs later when they return home. They fan the combs with their wings to help water evaporate from the nectar. This thickens the nectar into honey. When the honey is ready, they cover the comb with wax to protect it. Today’s bees have been bred to be far more efficient than bees of old. This allows them to make far more of the honey than they need. Beekeepers take the excess and leave what the bees need to survive. The honey bees use the honey for the same reason that we do. They eat it.



From Pollen to Seeds

While the worker bees are crawling around in the flowers drinking nectar, they are also doing a huge service to the plant world. Pollen is a fine, powdery substance that plants use to create fruit and seeds. It grows on the anther of the flowers. But it needs to be deposited on the pistil of the flower for the flower to make the fruit. The plant is unable to perform this function on its own. When the bees crawl around inside the flowers, they gather pollen on their legs – lots of it. Some of the pollen is then transferred from one flower to the pistil of the next flower. The pollen then makes its way down into the fruit-making part of the flower. There, the pollen combines with the material inside the ovary to grow into fruit filled with seeds.

Bee Dance

Bees communicate through two dances that they perform to tell other bees about the location of nectar. The first dance is known as the "waggle dance" and involves waggling their tail and turning in a figure eight. It is used to tell location of food that is more than 35 yards away from the hive. It is so specific and accurate that scientists have actually been able to translate the movements and can actually "read" the directions that the bees are giving. The round dance is for telling about food less than 35 yards and is done after sharing some of the nectar with the other bees. They do not get direction from her about location, but they can use the scent of the shared nectar to help them find it. Check out these links to learn more about the bee dances.

bees on honeycomb

If you have Apple QuickTime loaded on your computer you can watch bee dances here.

If not, here is a YouTube version – here.




bee gathering nectar

Bee Talk

two bees

Besides dancing, bees also communicate by buzzing, by putting off chemicals known as pheromones, and by sharing food - an activity called trophallaxis. The queen uses pheromones to keep order in her hive. Pheromones are also exchanged during the passing of food from one to another. The bees do this just before the round dance and when they feed their young or the queen. They are very complex and it would seem, very intelligent.


Bees also use pheromones to create a swarm. When a hive becomes too large for the queen to accommodate all of the worker bees, a new queen will be created. The old queen will produce pheromones to gather a portion of the hive together just before leaving to go off and create a new hive. The bees all fly around the queen looking for a new place to nest. The new queen then takes over in the old nest to control her hive.

bee swarm

Bee Concerns

empty hive

Missing Bees American and Canadian honey bees have been disappearing over the past six years. Hives have been abandoned, bees have been assumed dead and honey production has slowed. Scientists don’t know the reason. The bee disappearance has been blamed on stress, possible infections, pesticides, and even cell phones.

Killer Bees In the 1950s bees were brought from Africa to Brazil in hopes of breeding with the European bees that live here now. The goal was to create a better kind of honey bee that could make more honey. The bees migrated from Brazil northward until they reached the United States in 1990. These African bees have been given the name "killer bees" because they invade nests of the European bees and replace their queen. They are much more aggressive than the European bees and have been a concern for humans as well; stinging in large numbers. This has caused a number of human deaths.


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