About Honey Bees
When it comes to bees, everyone is very familiar with the honey bee. While all humans do not necessarily like bees, the honey bee is definitely one of the most popular as they produce one of the sweetest tasting products in the world: Honey! Of course, honey bees do not just produce and make honey, but their honey comb is also something that humans are really enjoy. We can make all sorts of things out of the honey comb wax! In this article, we will explore many of the facts that people simply do not know about these interesting and wonderful insects.
Honey bee Quick Facts
| Common name | Honey bee |
| Scientific name | Apis mellifera |
| Kingdom | Animalia |
| Phylum | Arthropoda |
| Class | Insecta |
| Order | Hymenoptera |
| Family | Apidae |
| Genus | Apis |
| Type | Social bee that makes honey and wax |
| Diet | Pollen, collected by forager bees |
| Habitat | Hives built from wax honeycomb |
| Special feature | Dies after stinging because of its barbed stinger |
Honey Bee Subspecies
For example, did you know that there are around thirty recognized subspecies of the western honey bee? Of course the honey bee represents only a very small fraction of the twenty-thousand species of bees, but there is definitely something to be said about this creature and what it contributes to the world.
The Honey Bee Life Cycle
The life cycle of the honey bee is actually pretty interesting. As in all honey bee colonies, the queen bee is the one that lays all of the eggs. The eggs are laid singularly in a cell of the wax honeycomb that is of course produced and shaped by the worker bees – come on, who hasn’t seen The Bee Movie? When the honey bee is first born from a larvae, it starts out as a worker bee and the young worker bee’s job is to clean the hive and feed all of the new larvae. This is of course when the young bee’s royal jelly producing glands develop which are used to feed larvae. This will continue to be the honey bee’s life until they decide to take their first flight and finally leave the hive. As soon as a bee leaves the hive to find pollen, they typically are now referred to as a forager bee.
How Honey Bees Defend Themselves
The honey bee’s defense does result in their death – they can only sting once and then they pass away. This is one reason why bees will only sting if they feel that they are absolutely threatened. Just keep that in mind when you are attempting to bother a bee hive. Honey bees are among the few bees that die after stinging a person. The honey bee has a barbed stinger which actually pulls away from their stomach along with a poison sac after stinging. The reason that the honey bee dies after it stings is because of the abdomen rupture from when the poison sac was pulled free from their abdomen.
Honey bee FAQs
What do honey bees make?
Honey bees make honey and wax honeycomb. Worker bees shape the wax into the cells where the queen lays eggs, and people use the wax to make many things.
Do honey bees die after they sting?
Yes. A honey bee’s stinger is barbed, so it pulls out the poison sac and part of the bee’s abdomen. The bee dies, which is why honey bees only sting when they feel really threatened.
Who lays the eggs in a honey bee hive?
The queen bee lays all the eggs. She lays one egg at a time in each wax cell.
What jobs do young honey bees do?
Young worker bees stay in the hive to clean it and to feed the larvae with royal jelly from special glands. When they start flying out to find pollen, they are called foragers.
How many kinds of honey bees are there?
The article says there may be about forty-four subspecies of honey bee, but only about eleven have been identified.
Randi Jones is the owner and founder of the Nature Gift Store, an online retailer specializing in nature-themed gifts, educational science projects, live animal nature kits and real butterfly artwork. A biology graduate who fell in love with insects, she founded the company in 2001 to make active learning about nature fun, accessible and engaging for children and adults. Her store offers real butterfly frames, home and garden decor and educational live animal kits, including ant farms, worm farms, tadpoles, ladybugs and hermit crabs, and she runs a bug museum in Washington featuring live animals like Eddie the Iguana alongside other reptiles and insects.
