Honey Bee

The honey bee, Apis mellifera, belongs to the family Apidae within the order Hymenoptera. Native to Europe, Africa, and western Asia, it has since been introduced by beekeepers across the globe due to its importance in pollination and honey production.

Honey bees are eusocial insects living in colonies of tens of thousands, organized around a single queen, thousands of female worker bees, and seasonal male drones. This complex social structure, along with their famous waggle-dance communication used to share the location of food sources, makes them one of the most studied social insects in the world.

Ecologically, honey bees are vital pollinators for countless flowering plants and agricultural crops, and their honey and wax production has made them one of the most economically and culturally significant insects to humans throughout history.

• Oval, moderately fuzzy body with alternating amber-brown and darker brown/black bands on the abdomen.
• Two pairs of translucent wings, the front pair larger than the hind pair.
• Pollen baskets (corbiculae) on the hind legs of worker bees, often visibly packed with pollen.
• Branched, feathery body hairs adapted for collecting pollen.
• Lookalikes: honey bees are often confused with yellow jackets, but honey bees have a fuzzier, more amber-toned body and a robust build, while yellow jackets are smooth, shiny, and more sharply black-and-yellow banded.

Honey bees are found nearly worldwide today due to widespread beekeeping, in both wild colonies (often in tree cavities) and managed hives. They favor areas with abundant flowering plants, such as meadows, orchards, and gardens, and remain active through spring, summer, and fall, clustering inside the hive to conserve warmth during winter.

Honey bees forage on nectar and pollen from a wide variety of flowering plants, transferring pollen between blooms in the process and providing essential pollination services. Worker bees communicate the direction and distance of food sources to nestmates through a symbolic waggle dance. The colony works collectively to build wax comb, store honey and pollen, and regulate hive temperature, and a colony can defend its hive by stinging when it perceives a threat.

Honey bees undergo complete metamorphosis: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. The queen lays eggs singly into wax comb cells, which hatch into legless larvae fed by nurse bees before being capped and pupating within the cell. Depending on the type of bee being raised, development from egg to adult takes about three weeks for workers, with the colony persisting year-round and overwintering as a cluster rather than individual hibernation.