Bees
Bees are essential pollinators with over ten thousand species classified mainly into two groups: social bees, like honeybees, which live in large colonies, and solitary bees, such as carpenter and leaf-cutter bees, which tend to live independently or in smaller groups. They inhabit a wide range of environments, from tropical regions to the Arctic, constructing their homes in trees, bushes, and underground. Honeybees are particularly notable for their ability to produce honey and beeswax, with millions of hives in the United States generating hundreds of tons of honey each year.
Physically, bees typically range from 0.1 to 3 inches long, with distinct roles in their colonies: worker bees, drones, and queens. Their bodies are equipped with specialized features such as wings, compound eyes, and legs that help them collect pollen and nectar. The life cycle of bees begins with eggs laid in beeswax cells, leading to the development of grubs that metamorphose into adult bees.
Bees play a crucial role in pollination, affecting the survival of many flowering plants, while also contributing significantly to the economy through honey and beeswax production. Despite some challenges, including their stings, which can be painful, there are beliefs in the medicinal benefits of bee stings for certain health conditions. Overall, bees are integral to both ecosystems and human industry.
Bees
Bee Facts
Classification:
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Subkingdom: Bilateria
- Phylum: Arthropoda
- Class: Insecta
- Order: Hymenoptera (bees, ants, and wasps)
- Suborder: Apocrita
- Superfamily: Apoidea, with six families, four subfamilies, and tribes Bombini (bumblebees), Meliponini (stingless bees), Apini (honeybees)
- Geographical location: Every continent except Antarctica
- Habitat: All live on land in forests, plains, swamps, and deserts; colonies are in hives or tunnels, in trees, fallen logs, or sandbanks
- Gestational period: Three to five weeks
- Life span: Honeybee workers live six to eight months, queens live up to ten years, and drones live until winter; solitary bees do not live in hives kept warm year-round, so most die in winter
- Special anatomy: Three legs on each side of the thorax; two pairs of synchronized, membranous wings; a poison stinger; a tongue for sipping nectar; pollen baskets
Over ten thousand bee species exist, classified in two groups. Social bees (for example, honeybees) live in groups of over ten thousand. Solitary bees (for example, carpenter and leaf cutter bees) live in smaller groups. Bees live from the tropics to the Arctic. Wild bees live in trees, bushes, and in the ground, building hives of beeswax, leaves, wood, or clay.
The best known and most plentiful bees are honeybees, imported to the United States during European colonization. Millions of US honeybee hives produce hundreds of tons of honey yearly, one third of the honey made in the hives. The rest of the honey sustains the bees.
Honeybees—social bees—produce beeswax hives, each holding over ten thousand bees. Solitary carpenter bees tunnel into wood, such as trees or fence posts. Their colonies contain about one hundred bees. Another solitary bee class, the leaf-cutters, tunnel in wood and build from leaf bits joined by secreted glue. Miner bees live in sandy tunnels in groups of several thousands. Adult solitary bees are males or females.
Physical Characteristics of Bees
Bees are 0.1 inch to 3 inches long. There are three types of honeybees: workers, queens, and drones. In any given hive, 95 percent of the bees are immature female workers, 5 percent are males (drones), and one is a mature female (queen).
The worker bee’s main body parts are head, thorax, and abdomen. The head has five eyes, two antennae, and a mouth. Three small eyes sit atop the head, arranged triangularly. Two compound eyes at the front of the head contain many six-sided facets. Eye number, design, and arrangement give keen eyesight. Two antennae, organs of smell, protrude from the head. Their uses include finding food and recognizing bees that do not belong in a hive. The important mouth parts are the tongue and jaws. The tongue, a long, slender lower lip, is rolled in a tube used to sip flower nectar. Scissor-shaped jaws cut and shape things or bite defensively.
The thorax, behind the head, holds wings and legs. The four membranous wings beat over ten thousand times a minute. Front wings hook to rear ones to work as synchronized propellers. Wing speed and synchronization let bees fly precisely and carry loads of food outweighing the individual bee. The three legs on each side of the thorax end in claws and sticky pads, enabling bees to hang from flowers or walk upside down across hives. Bee legs and bodies are covered with fine hairs. They collect pollen (the second bee food after honey), which is transferred, via leg combs, to pollen baskets in the hindmost legs.
The abdomen, behind the thorax, contains the most organs. Beeswax, made in the abdomen, collects on abdomen wax plates harvested by mouth and used to build hives. At the rear of the abdomen is a stinger. It is 30 percent of the length of the bee’s body. In worker bees the stinger is barbed, so that it remains in the animals it stings. This is fatal to the bee, because in freeing itself from its victim a bee rips away much of its abdomen. “Stingless” bees and drones lack functional stingers. Queens have barbless stingers.
The Life Cycle of Bees
Every honeybee begins as an egg laid in a beeswax cell. In three days a grub hatches. Workers first feed all grubs royal jelly. Soon, worker grubs get a honey-pollen substitute. After several days, the queen grubs are sealed into cells and enter a third life stage, pupation, spinning cocoons and metamorphosing into queens. Drones, from unfertilized eggs, only fertilize queens leaving to begin new colonies. This kills the drones and gives each queen enough semen to fertilize all the eggs—often a million—she lays during her life.
Workers do all hive jobs except egg laying. They feed grubs, guard hives, keep air fresh by beating their wings to make air currents, gather pollen and nectar, seek bee glue (propolis) from trees, use propolis to mend hive-wall breaks, and build egg, honey, or nectar cells. They die six to eight months after birth.
Solitary bees differ from honeybees in several ways. First, all are functional males or females. Second, they make homes from leaves (leaf-cutter bees), wood (carpenter bees), or clay (mason bees). They lay eggs in cells holding pollen and honey, and larvae and pupae develop independently. Their colonies are smaller than honeybee hives because winter kills most inhabitants; colony continuation depends on female survivors. Finally, their jaws and stingers differ, enabling the use of different materials in building from their environment.
Destructive and Beneficial Bees
Bees pollinate most flowering plants, and thousands of plant species could not survive otherwise. In addition, the bee industry annually gleans hundreds of tons of honey and beeswax, earning sixty million dollars a year. Sweet, nutritional honey is used to flavor drinks, as a health food, and in salad dressings, is poured over pancakes, and is used in many other ways. Beeswax also has many uses, from candles to lipstick and eyebrow pencil components. Even “destructive” bee stings may have benefits; many people believe that stings cure arthritis and rheumatism.
Principal Terms
abdomen: the hind part of a bee body, containing the stinger and most organs
pupation: the process whereby bee larvae metamorphose into bees
royal jelly: the protein- and hormone-rich food that workers feed queen larvae
thorax: the midsection of the bee, from which legs and wings protrude
Bibliography
Bailey, Jill. The Life Cycle of a Bee. New York: Bookwright, 1990. Print.
Gullan, P. J., and P. G. Cranston. The Insects: An Outline of Entomology. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Science, 2000. Print.
Michener, Charles Duncan. The Bees of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000. Print.
O’Toole, Christopher, and Anthony Raw. Bees of the World. Reprint. London: Blandford, 1999. Print.
Williams, Paul H., et al. Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2014. Print.