The Book of Bees

Western honeybee (also known as the European honeybee)

Apis mellifera

BEE-HAVIOR

If you are from North America, you often see Apis mellifera in gardens and parks. They are the only honeybees around. But these bees are immigrants. They were brought over by Europeans back in the 1600s. Why? Because they are great pollinators. A colony of honeybees can pollinate a lot of food crops. They also make a loooot of honey. It is their main food. But they can make enough for beekeepers to share.

One honeybee queen makes all the babies in the colony. She lives for two or three years. A few thousand male drones live for three months. They have one job, although only 5 or 10 of them are lucky enough to do it. They mate with the queen. Up to 60,000 female workers do everything else for the colony. They protect it. (That is why workers have stingers—ouch!) They raise the babies. They clean. They feed the queen. They collect pollen and nectar. A worker can fly eight miles in a day and visit 1,000 flowers.

All these bees live together in a hive built of wax. This comes from wax glands in a worker bee’s abdomen. A bee chews the wax to soften it, and then she spits it out and forms it into a honeycomb. Workers in the wild build honeycombs inside tree hollows or caves.

WHERE?

Europe, Middle East, Africa

SIZE

Female worker: 0.4–0.6 inch (10–15 mm) long

Queen: 0.8 inch (20 mm) long

Male: 0.7 inch (18 mm) long

Asiatic honeybee

Apis cerana

BEE-HAVIOR

For 9,000 years, humans have eaten honey from honeybees. We’ve collected their wax to make things like candles and lip balm. We raise them to pollinate our crops. Our lives would be less sweet—and we would be a lot hungrier—without honeybees.

Asiatic honeybees are the same shape and color as western honeybees (Apis mellifera). They have other things in common too. For example, workers collect pollen on their bodies and legs and eyes. They collect nectar by slurping it with their tongues. They roll pollen and nectar together into balls, then carry the balls home in “baskets” on the backs of their legs. The scientific word for this basket is corbicula.

Asiatic honeybees live all over Asia. They can survive in hot places and cold places, in dry places and wet places, and at high and low altitudes. The higher up in the mountains the bees live, the bigger they are.

Honeybees build nests out of wax inside tree cavities. Each nest contains a special room shaped like a peanut. Only queens are raised inside it.

Like all honeybees, Asiatic honeybees forage in many types of flowers. They are generalists. They are important pollinators of coconuts, spices, mangos, cashews, and guava. Yum!

WHERE?

Southern Asia into Russia, Australia

SIZE

Female worker: 0.3–0.35 inch (7–9 mm) long

Queen: 0.4 inch (11 mm) long

Male drone: 0.35–0.4 inch (9–10 mm) long

Asian giant honeybee

Apis dorsata

BEE-HAVIOR

Apis dorsata isn’t just bigger than other honeybees. It does cool stuff others don’t.

For starters, these bees don’t bother to hide their nests inside hollow trees. Instead, they build honeycombs on tree branches and underneath cliffs, right out in the open. The combs hang like big droopy drips. Sometimes there are 50 big droopy drips hanging from the same “bee tree.” Sometimes the combs are 75 feet (23 m) in the air.

The brood of baby bees is snug inside the comb. Honey and pollen are also stored inside. Thousands of worker bees cover the whole outside of the comb. This protects the contents of the comb, even from wind and rain. Also safe: as much as 33 pounds (15 kg) of honey.

Beekeepers tried for a long time to domesticate this species. It did not work. So instead, locals climb a bee tree in the middle of the night to harvest wild Apis dorsata honey. It is dangerous for the humans because of the height and because they are sometimes attacked by tigers. And it is dangerous for the bees because sometimes the humans knock down whole hives.

Apis dorsata bees live in tropical places. They forage in many kinds of tropical plants. They are very important pollinators of mangos and litchis, lemons and star fruit, squashes and radishes, coconuts and coffee, and pepper and macadamia nuts. Are you getting hungry yet?

WHERE?

India, Southeast Asia

SIZE

0.7–0.8 inch (17–20 mm) long

How Honey Happens

Oh, honey. That delicious golden stuff that you drizzle onto breakfast cereal or ice cream. It just makes life sweeter! You might know that bees make honey. But how, exactly, does honey happen?

It starts with a forager bee (see Inside the Hive here for more on the different roles bees have). Forager bees fly out from the hive to collect nectar, that sugary liquid made by plants, and pollen. When a forager bee finds a delicious flower, it slurps up the nectar with its proboscis and stores it in its crop. The crop is a special nectar-holding pocket in the front of the bee’s stomach. It allows the bee to drink the nectar but not digest it.