Honeybee
Honeybee
State Insect of Kansas (1976)
Arkansas (1973), Georgia (1975
Other types of bees
O
ne of     the most familiar insects in the world is the Honeybee.  This member of the insect     order
Hymenoptera
plays a key     role in the human and natural world.  More has been written about honeybees than any     other species of insect.  The human fascination with this insect began thousands of     years ago when people discovered what wonderfully tasty stuff honey is!
Ho ney
is a     thick liquid produced by certain types of bees from the nectar of flowers.  While     many species of insects consume nectar, honeybees refine and concentrate nectar to make     honey.  Indeed, they make lots of honey so they will have plenty of food for times     when flower nectar is unavailable, such as winter.  Unlike most insects, honeybees     remain active through the winter, consuming and metabolizing honey in order to keep from     freezing to death.  Early humans probably watched bears and other mammals raid bee     hives for honey and then tried it themselves.  Once people found out what honey was,     next they had to learn how to get it from the bees safely!
Honeybees have a bright color pattern to warn potential predators (or honey thieves!)     that they have a weapon to defend themselves.   Their weapon is a modified
ovipositor
(egg-laying tube).  This is     combined with a venom gland to create a stinger (formally known as an
aculeus
) located at the end of the     abdomen.  Because the stinger is modified from a structure found only in females,     male bees cannot sting.  When the hive is threatened, honeybees will swarm out and     attack with their stingers to drive the enemy away.
Honeybees, like most insects, look at the world through
compound     eyes
.  These are made of hundreds of small simple eyes called
ommatidia
.  The images received by     all the ommatidia are put together in the insect's brain to give it a very different way     of seeing the world.  To see the world the way a bee does, check out Andrew Giger's     B-Eye web site in the links section.
  In the wild, they create elaborate nests called
hives
containing up to 20,000 individuals during the summer months.  (Domestic hives may     have over 80,000 bees.)  They work together in a highly structured social     order.  Each bee belongs to one of three specialized groups called
castes
workers
.
There is only         one queen in a hive and her main purpose in life is to make more bees.  She can lay         over 1,500 eggs per day and will usually live less than two years, although there are a         few records of queens living longer than that.  She is larger (up to 20mm) and has a         longer abdomen than the workers or drones.  She has chewing mouthparts.  Her         stinger is curved with no barbs on it and she can use it many times.
 
Drones, since         they are males, have no stinger.  They live about eight weeks.  Only a few hundred - at most - are ever present in the hive.  Their sole function is to mate         with a new queen, if one is produced in a given year.  A drone's eyes are noticeably         bigger than those of the other castes.  This helps them to spot the queens when they         are on their nuptial flight.  Any drones left at the end of the season are considered         non-essential and will be driven out of the hive to die.
 
Worker bees do         all the different tasks needed to maintain and operate the hive.  They make up the         vast majority of the hive's occupants and they are all sterile females.  When young,         they are called
house bees
and         work in the hive doing comb construction, brood rearing, tending the queen and drones,         cleaning, temperature regulation and defending the hive.  Older workers are called
field bees
.  They forage outside         the hive to gather nectar, pollen, water and certain sticky plant resins used in hive         construction.  Workers born early in the season will live about 6 weeks while those         born in the fall will live until the following spring.   Workers are about 12 mm long         and highly specialized for what they do, with a structure called a pollen basket (or
corbiculum
) on each hind leg, an extra stomach         for storing and transporting nectar or honey and four pairs of special glands that secrete         beeswax on the underside of their abdomen.  They have a straight, barbed stinger         which can only be used once.  It rips out of their abdomen after use, which kills the         bee.
 
If you want to see a 3-D model of a worker bee click on the picture. 
- NOTE: This is a 1.3 meg file! -
(Save the         animation to your hard drive [right click, save target as, etc.] to watch later.  That way you can do other stuff while it is downloading.)  Note the flattened area on         the hind leg - this is where the pollen basket is located.
If you want to see more 3D insects, visit the
The 3-D bee is best viewed with Quicktime Player.
Click here
if you don't already         have it.
 
The central feature of the bee hive is the
honeycomb
.   This marvel of insect         engineering consists of flat vertical panels of six-sided cells made of
beeswax
.   Beeswax is produced         from glands on the underside of the abdomens of worker bees when they are between 12 and         15 days old.  House bees take the beeswax and form it with their mouths into the         honeycomb.  The cells within the comb are used to raise young and to store honey and         pollen.
The comb is two-sided, with cells on both sides.  As you can see, the cells         are perfectly uniform in shape.  Not only that, but the combs are built a precise         distance apart depending on whether they are meant to contain food or young bees.  The nursery area of the hive is called the
brood comb
,         and that is where the queen lays her eggs.
Flower nectar is one of two food sources used by honeybees.  The other is     pollen.  Both are gathered by the field bees as they fly about on their daily     foraging flights. 
Ho neybees are important pollinators
As the field bees forage for nectar, pollen sticks to the fuzzy hairs         which cover their bodies.  Some of this pollen rubs off on the next flower they         visit, fertilizing the flower and resulting in better fruit production.  Some plants         will not produce fruit at all without the help of honeybees.  In the United States         alone, it is estimated that honeybees accomplish 1/4 of the pollination needed for all         fruit produced for human consumption - an estimated $10 billion worth of work each year!
The         field bees stop periodically to groom themselves and collect the pollen onto their pollen         baskets.   They remove this load from their legs when they return to the hive and the         house bees store it in a special part of the comb.  The pollen provides protein and         other essential nutrients for the bees. 
Photo by P.O Gustafson
There are four different species of honeybee in the     world:
The Little         Honeybee (Apis florea) - native to southeast Asia
The Eastern         Honeybee (Apis cerana) - native to eastern Asia as far north as Korea & Japan
The Giant         Honeybee (Apis dorsata) - native to southeast Asia
The Western         Honeybee (Apis mellifera) - native to Europe, Africa and western Asia
Cave paintings in Europe indicate that early peoples were harvesting honey 8,000 years     ago.  The next step in human/honeybee relations came when people started keeping bees     in man-made structures rather than just going out and searching for wild hives.  The     ancient Egyptians were beekeepers and their methods were copied throughout the     Mediterranean and Middle East.  They used the Western Honeybee, and that is the most     widely used species today.  The Eastern Honeybee was also domesticated long ago in     China.  The other two species of honeybee do not nest in cavities and so were not     suited to being put into hives.  The subject of beekeeping is beyond the scope of     this web page.  For more information, see the links below.
Top of page
W hat are "Killer" Bees?
More properly called Africanized Honeybees, these come from a subspecies of honeybee (Apis     mellifera scutellata) released accidentally in Brazil in 1957.  They were     imported from South Africa by a researcher who was attempting to produce a variety of     honeybee better adapted to the tropics than the European Honeybee.  Unfortunately,     Africanized Honeybees not only produce honey better in hot climates, but they are also     much more aggressive at defending the nest.  Many people have been killed by mass     stinging resulting from getting too close to a nest of Africanized honeybees.   The     escaped bees did well in the wild and began reproducing and expanding their range across     South America into Central America and Mexico.  They were recorded in Texas in     October 1990, California in November 1994 and Oklahoma in 2004.  Since they are     adapted for tropical conditions, they may not expand their range beyond the southern part     of the U.S., but that remains to be seen.  They can tolerate up to 3 1/2 months of     freezing weather.
Distribution of     Africanized Honeybees in the U.S.
1990-2011.
Graphic from the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center.
Visit their web site to learn more about Africanized Bees!
W HAT     IS COLONY COLLAPSE DISORDER?
Colony collapse disorder (or CCD for short) refers to a mysterious malady affecting     domestic honeybees that causes them to leave the hive and not return, leading ultimately     to death of the colony.  First noticed in late 2006 in North America, CCD has been     the focus of much research to try to determine what is causing it.  Pathogens,     parasites, environmental toxins and even cell phone transmissions have been the subject of     investigation.  As of this writing (November 2007) the one factor that has been     identified as being uniquely associated with CCD is a virus known as Israeli Acute     Paralysis Virus (IAPV).  It is not proven yet that IAPV is the sole cause of CCD, but     it is found in nearly all hives affected by CCD.  A possible scenario is that CCD is     triggered by various stress factors in bees infected with IAPV.  Research is     currently underway to test this hypothesis.
For more information on CCD, see the Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension     Consortium website.
There are over 25,000 kinds of bees in the world. 
About 3,500 different species are known from North America alone! 
Some of the more noticeable types are listed below.
Bumble Bees!
Bumblebee visiting a Zinnia flower
There are about 50 different types of Bumblebees (Bombus sp.)         in North America.   Much larger than other bees, some species are over an inch         long.  They are densely covered with yellow and black
(and sometimes red) bands of hairs. 
The long mouthparts of bumblebees allow them to gather nectar         from flowers that have their nectaries buried deep within the petals, such as red         clover.  They are social nesters, although their society is not as highly ordered as         that of honeybees.  In contrast to honeybees, nests are made anew each spring by         solitary queens who hibernate through the winter.   The large bumblebees seen in the         spring are queens looking for food and a place to start a new colony.  They will         often take over an abandoned field mouse nest for their own.  Laura Smith has posted         a lot of information about bumblebees at her web site . 
Another         good site for bumblebee information is maintained by the Xerces Society .
Carpenter Bees!
Carpenter bees resemble Bumblebees, but they may be recognized by their dark, shiny     (hairless) abdomen.  The common North American species east of the Rocky Mountains is Xylocopa virginica.   They are solitary nesters and make their nest     by chewing tunnels into wood.  Often people will notice them burrowing into the     rafters of barns or outbuildings.  On a quiet day you can hear the bee at work as she     chews her way into the wood with her strong mandibles.   The hole is 1/2 inch in     diameter and goes straight in about 2 inches before branching at right angles into the     brood chambers.  The males are sometimes encountered patrolling near a nest in a     distinctive bobbing flight.  This can lead to some anxious moments if you are     suddenly confronted with a large hovering bee only a few feet in front of you!  The     bee is looking for a mate, however, not a fight, and since it is a male it cannot sting     you anyway!  Male carpenter bees have a white face.  Learn more about Carpenter     Bees from University     of Kentucky Entomology .
Sweat Bees!
This family of small, often metallic-colored bees has about 500 species in North America.   They are primarily solitary nesters, but some show a degree of social behavior.   Only a few species in the genus Lasioglossum are attracted to sweat.   They are just after water and do not want to sting, but they will if you purposely     or accidentally squeeze them.  Their food consists of the normal bee diet of pollen     and nectar.  They typically dig a vertical burrow in the ground with side chambers     for the eggs.
Leaf-cutting Bees!
Leaf-cutter bees (Megachile sp.) are a type of bee which has the interesting     trait of chewing little circles out of leaves or flower petals and using these to     construct small, thimble-shaped nests in a dry, protected location.  They are     typically dark in color with bands of whitish hairs running across the abdomen and range     in size from 5 - 25 mm.  There are 130 species in North America.  Both     leafcutters and mason bees (see below) are superior pollinators compared to     honeybees.  One leafcutter bee will do the same amount of pollination as 20     honeybees!  To learn more, read what the USDA Agricultural Research Service has to     say about the Alfalfa Leafcutter     Bee .
Mason Bees!
Mason bees (Osmia sp.) typically use the abandoned tunnels of wood-boring beetles     for their nest.  These small bees are not social.  Mason bees mate immediately     after hatching in the spring.  The female then searches for an appropriate hole or     crevice to build her nest.  After preparing a brood chamber, she gathers pollen and     nectar until she has enough to feed a larva to adulthood.  Then she lays an egg and     closes the chamber with mud.  She repeats the process until the tunnel is completely     filled and caps the tunnel with an extra-thick plug of mud.  She will repeat this     process until she dies in early summer.   The mature larvae pupate and overwinter in     their nursery cells.  Mason bees are closely related to the Leaf-cutting bees.  To gather pollen, they both use a brush of hairs on the underside of the abdomen (called a
scopa
) instead of pollen baskets     on their legs.   There are 140 species in North America.  You can find out more     about Mason Bees from the North Carolina Extension     service and the Wikipedia entry for the species..