Honey Bee Facts and Information
Introduction to Honey Bee
The Honey Bee is a type of insect that most people are familiar with. Honey is delicious and even good for you. We often consume it while taking for granted all of the hard work that this insect puts into creating it. The Honey Bee plays a huge role in the balance of ecosystems and for humans so we all need to be appreciative of these little guys.
Honey Bee Description
The Honey Bee offers a body that is yellow and black in color. It is believed that the brightness of the colors severe as a warning. Their stinger is long and thin and that is what they use to get nectar from flowers. It is also the part of the body that they use to sting a person or other living thing that they feel may be a threat to them.
| Phylum | Arthropoda |
| Class | Insecta |
| Order | Hymenoptera |
| Family | Apidae |
| Subfamily | Apinae |
| Tribe | Apini |
| Genus | Apis |
They have compound eyes which are made up of many smaller eyes. This enables them to see things in a very different way from humans and other living things.
Honey Bee Distribution
The Honey Bee is very diverse in where it lives. They are able to adapt to a variety of locations. They tend to live in areas that are warm but they are able to survive in some cooler locations as well. They spend their time living in the bee hive which can be in a tree, around your home, and in some of the most bizarre locations you can imagine.
Honey Bee Behavior
The Honey Bee is able to use the nectar from flowers to create their honey. They make it so that they will have plenty of food to consume in the winter months when they can’t get nectar. This is one type of bee that remains active in the winter. It is believed that the honey offers them more than nourishment. It is also a way for them to keep their bodies from getting too cold.
The Honey Bee is a very social creature. They live in hives and there can be more then 20,000 of them in one location. They have a very complex social order with each of the bees having various responsibilities. There are three categories that they will be one of – queens, drones, and workers.
The Honey Bee is extremely important for pollination to occur throughout our world. Without it we wouldn’t have a vast variety of foods that we depend on for our own survival. It is estimated that to replace the labor of this bee it would cost over $10 million annually!
Honey Bee Feeding
The biggest part of the diet for the Honey Bee comes from the nectar. They will move around and consume it from various flowers. In the winter though when those flowers aren’t offered they will consume the honey that they have created. The Honey Bee also consumes pollen when it is available. They are small insects so they don’t consume very much food on a daily basis.
Honey Bee Reproduction
Each hive of Honey Bees will contain 1 queen bee. Her job is to make sure that there are more bees being produced. Each day she can lay up to 1,000 eggs. She will live about 2 years and then another queen will take over her place.
All of the drones are males and they don’t have any stingers. They only have a life span of about 8 weeks. Their sole purpose is mating with the queen Honey Bee. Sometimes queens don’t want to mate with certain drones and they will be driven out of the hive. They aren’t able to survive on their own.
