⚡ HoneyBees
10 species worldwide
🍯 Tiny makers: A single worker bee produces only about 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in her whole life. That means it takes thousands of bees to fill a jar!
💃 Dance language: The waggle dance is one of the few examples of non-human symbolic communication in nature. Bees “speak” in angles, steps, and buzzes.
🔥 Superpower attack: The heat balling defence can raise the temperature to around 47 °C (hotter than a sauna!) — just enough to kill a hornet, but safe for bees.
👑 Royal diet: A larva destined to be queen is fed only royal jelly — this special diet switches on genes that make her fertile and long-lived.
⏳ Busy lives: In summer, a worker bee lives only about 6 weeks because foraging wears out her wings. A winter worker can live several months.
🔬 Super sense: Bees can see ultraviolet light, which helps them spot flower patterns invisible to us.
🎶 Buzz science: The sound of a bee’s buzz comes from rapid wingbeats — about 200 beats per second!
The Queen 👑🐝
👩⚖️ Role: She is the mother of the colony. Her main job is egg-laying (up to 1,500 eggs a day). She also produces special pheromones (“queen substance”) that keep the hive organised.
⏳ Lifespan: 2–5 years, the longest of any bee in the hive.
🥚🍯 Development: A queen starts as a fertilised egg, but the larva is fed only royal jelly, which triggers her queen development.
💘✈️ Mating flight (nuptial flight): A young queen mates with several male bees (drones) in mid-air, then stores sperm in a pouch called the spermatheca for life.
🔁 Supersedure: When the queen grows weak, the colony raises a replacement queen. Other times, new queens are made during swarming (when a colony splits) or after sudden queen loss (emergency queen rearing). The first queen to hatch often eliminates rivals.
The Drone 🕶️🐝
👔 Identity: Drones are male bees, with larger bodies and huge eyes to spot queens during flight.
💍 Function: Their sole purpose is to mate with virgin queens — never their own mother.
🌤️ Activity: They fly to drone congregation areas on warm afternoons. They do not forage and cannot sting.
📆 Lifespan: A few weeks to a few months. In autumn, workers expel them to conserve food (drone eviction).
🫥 After mating: A drone dies instantly because his reproductive organ (endophallus) is torn away.
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The Worker Bees 🧰🐝
(All workers are female. Their roles change with age — a system called temporal polyethism)
🧽 Cleaners (days 1–3): Newly emerged workers clean brood cells for fresh eggs.
🍼 Nurses (days 3–10): They feed larvae with brood food (pollen + honey mix) and sometimes royal jelly. They also regulate brood warmth by vibrating muscles.
🧱 Builders & Storekeepers (days 7–14): They secrete wax scales, build comb, cure nectar into honey, and pack pollen.
⚱️ Undertakers & Ventilators (days 12–18): They remove dead bees, fan wings for ventilation, and bring in water for cooling.
🌼✈️ Foragers (from about day 14): They collect nectar, pollen, water, and tree resin (propolis). They navigate using the sun and even polarised light.
💃 Communication (waggle dance): Foragers “dance” in figure-eight patterns to show direction and distance to food.
The Hive Guards 🛡️🐝
(Guard duty is taken on by older workers)
🚧 Checkpoints: Guards inspect every bee’s colony scent (cuticular hydrocarbons). Outsiders are rejected.
🤺 Tactics: They use alarm pheromones, head-butting, and stinging.
🐯 Heat-balling: Against wasps or hornets, dozens cluster around the enemy and vibrate, raising the temperature to lethal levels.
🚪 Gate control: They can narrow the hive entrance with wax or propolis to slow down invaders.
Bumblebees 🎩🐝
🧸 Appearance: Round, furry, and with a loud buzz. Many UK species show different coloured stripes or bands.
🏡 Colonies: Small and annual (dozens to hundreds of bees). Unlike honeybee colonies, which survive year-round, bumblebee colonies die out each autumn.
❄️ Winter survival: Because bumblebees don’t store large honey reserves, the whole colony cannot survive the winter. Only new queens fatten up and hibernate underground. In spring, each queen starts a brand-new colony by herself.
🎶 Buzz pollination (sonication): Bumblebees vibrate flowers like tomatoes and blueberries to shake out pollen that honeybees cannot reach.
🍯 Honey: They make tiny wax pots and store just enough honey for short-term use — not nearly enough for people to harvest.
⚠️ Stings: Females can sting multiple times, unlike honeybees. They’re usually gentle unless their nest is threatened.
🌍 Importance: They fly in cooler, cloudier weather — vital pollinators for crops and wildflowers when honeybees stay indoors.
Asian Honeybees 🧭🐝 (Apis cerana)
🗺️ Range: Native to South and East Asia. Slightly smaller than the Western honeybee (Apis mellifera).
🏯 Colony style: Smaller hives, sometimes open-air. Less honey surplus.
🛡️ Defence behaviours: They perform “shimmering” waves to scare off hornets. If attacked, they form a heat ball to kill intruders.
🕷️ Varroa resistance: Having co-evolved with Varroa destructor mites, they interrupt brood cycles and groom effectively.
💔 Species difference: They do not interbreed with Apis mellifera and their dances differ slightly.
🇬🇧 UK relevance: They aren’t found here, but their natural defences give ideas for managing invasive hornets like the Asian hornet.