Honey Bee

A honey bee is a eusocial flying insect of the genus Apis, in the bee family Apidae. Honey bees build perennial nests in cavities, with hexagonal cells made of secreted wax, and store surplus food as honey. A colony generally contains one queen, seasonally up to a few thousand drones and tens of thousands of female workers. Workers change duties with age, from feeding brood and receiving nectar to cleaning the hive, guard duty and foraging. The best-known species is the western honey bee, which is farmed for honey and crop pollination. Honey bees use chemicals and a dance language that conveys the distance and direction to food, water or nesting sites.

About the honey bee

The western honey bee is a social insect that lives in large colonies headed by one egg-laying queen. It is the most common of the 7–12 honey bee species worldwide and the main bee kept by beekeepers for honey and crop pollination. Native to Africa, the Middle East and Europe, it now lives on every continent but Antarctica.

The scientific name, Apis mellifera, means "honey-bearing bee." It was one of the first insects people domesticated. Western honey bees are eusocial: each colony has a single fertile female, thousands of mostly sterile female workers, and a small number of males called drones. Because the colony survives year after year and reproduces as a unit, it is often described as a superorganism.

Honey bees are generally reddish-brown with black bands and orange-yellow rings on the abdomen. The thorax is hairy and the abdomen less so, and the legs are mostly dark brown to black. Workers carry a "pollen basket" on each hind leg for hauling pollen home.

The three castes look different. Queens are the largest at 18–20 mm (0.7–0.8 in), with a longer, rounder abdomen. Workers are 10–15 mm (0.4–0.6 in) long, and drones 15–17 mm (0.6–0.7 in), with much larger eyes that probably help them spot queens in flight. Drones have no stinger.

The worker's stinger is a modified egg-laying tube with barbs. Contrary to popular belief, a worker does not always die after stinging. The barbs catch only in elastic material such as mammal skin, where the stinger, venom sac and a nerve cluster tear free and keep pumping venom.

Behavior and diet

Honey bees feed on nectar and pollen from flowers, and on honey, which is nectar the workers have concentrated. Foragers suck up nectar with their tongues and store it in a part of the gut called the crop, then pass it to younger workers back at the hive. Those workers add enzymes and let water evaporate until the honey is thick enough to resist mold, then cap it with wax for storage.

Larvae are fed by young "nurse" workers. For the first three days, every larva gets royal jelly. Larvae destined to be workers then switch to "bee bread," a mix of pollen and nectar, while future queens stay on royal jelly. Workers turn a larva into a queen by continuing to feed it royal jelly instead of switching it to bee bread.

A worker's job changes with age. For about her first 10 days she cleans cells and feeds larvae, then builds comb from wax she secretes, then stores incoming food. After about day 20 she becomes a forager for the rest of her life. Summer workers live only a few weeks, but those born in autumn can live several months while the colony clusters through winter.

Honey bees are famous for dancing. Karl von Frisch won a Nobel Prize in 1973 for showing that returning foragers dance on the comb to tell nestmates about food. A "round dance" signals food within about 50 m (160 ft) of the hive, while the "waggle dance" gives distance and direction. Bees also share flower scents and use pheromones; when a worker stings, she releases an alarm scent that agitates other bees and helps them find the threat.

Their eyes see ultraviolet light, which reveals flower markings invisible to people and helps them find the sun on cloudy days. Bees are diurnal foragers, and workers cannot fly below about 10 °C (50 °F). Flight needs a body temperature of about 35 °C (95 °F), and the hive keeps its brood at that temperature too.

Colonies reproduce by swarming, usually in spring and early summer. The hive raises new queens, and the old queen leaves with about two-thirds of the workers to find a new home such as a hollow tree. The new queens fight until only one is left, and she then flies out to mate with 1–17 drones in midair, often about 9 m (30 ft) above the ground. Each drone dies right after mating.

Range and habitat

The western honey bee probably originated in Africa or Asia and spread naturally through Africa, the Middle East and Europe. People carried European subspecies to North America in the early 1600s and later to South America, Australia, New Zealand and eastern Asia. In North America it is not native.

As it spread, the species adapted to local climates, from forming tight winter clusters in cold regions to migratory swarming in Africa. Thirty-one subspecies are recognized, grouped into African, northwestern European, southeastern European and Middle Eastern branches.

Honey bees prefer habitats with plenty of flowering plants, such as meadows, open woods and gardens, and can survive in grassland, desert and wetland if there is enough water, food and shelter. Wild colonies need a cavity to nest in, such as a hollow tree.

Honey bees are also big business for agriculture. Beekeepers truck hives from crop to crop, and California's almond pollination each February and March is the largest managed pollination event in the world, using more than a third of all managed honey bees in the United States.

Conservation status

The western honey bee has no global assessment on the IUCN Red List. Its only assessment is a regional one: a 2025 assessment covering Europe lists it as Data Deficient, meaning there was not enough information to judge its extinction risk in that region.

Honey bees face serious threats from pests and disease. North American and European populations were badly depleted by Varroa mites in the early 1990s, and U.S. beekeepers were hit by colony collapse disorder in 2006 and 2007. Better management and mite treatments saved most commercial operations. Feral colonies were greatly reduced but are slowly recovering in mild climates as bees with Varroa resistance spread. Insecticides are widely believed to have depleted bee populations as well, though research on this has not been conclusive. Worries about honey bee losses have raised interest in other pollinators, such as the common eastern bumblebee.

Predators include hornets and other wasps, dragonflies, spiders, lizards, toads and frogs, bee-eaters and other birds, and mammals such as raccoons, opossums, skunks and honey badgers.