Honeybees are flying insects, and close relatives of wasps and ants. They are found on every continent on earth, except for Antarctica.

Bees of all varieties live on nectar and pollen. Without bees, pollination would be difficult and time consuming it is estimated that one-third of the human food supply depends on insect pollination. Bees have a long, straw-like tongue called a probiscus that allows them to drink the nectar from deep within blossoms. Bees are also equipped with two wings, two antennae, and three segmented body parts (the head, the thorax, and the abdomen). Honeybees are social insects that live in colonies. The hive population consists of a single queen, a few hundred drones, and thousands of worker bees.

The honeybees we know and love here at Honeybee Centre forage for nectar and pollen from flowering plants. They use the nectar collected to create our favourite sweet treat - honey! When carrying the nectar back to the hive, their bodies break down the complex sucrose of the nectar into two simple sugars, fructose and glucose. Tucking it neatly into a honeycomb cell, the bees will then beat their wings furiously over top of this syrupy sweet liquid to fan out the moisture and thicken the substance. When it is complete, the bees will cap that cell with beeswax, sealing the perfected honey for consumption later on.

Worker Bees

Worker bees are the most familiar-looking member of the honeybee hive, as they make up about 99% of each colony's population. Worker bees are all female, and they do almost everything for the hive. From birth to her death 45 days later, the worker bee is given different tasks to do during different stages of her life.

Worker bees are responsible for everything from feeding the larvae (the baby bees), to tending to the queen, to cleaning the hive, to collecting food, to guarding the colony, to building honeycomb.

The stinger of the worker bee is barbed, so when she is forced to defend herself or the hive, her stinger will become stuck in the skin of her victim. She is unable to pull it out, and dies when she inevitably tears herself away from the stuck stinger, leaving it behind with the venom sack still pumping venom into her victim. Consequently, honeybees are very gentle - they don't want to die any more than you want to be stung. Be nice to them, and they'll be nice to you.

Drone Bees

Male bees are called drones. Their job is to mate with queens from other hives. If they do get the opportunity to mate, they die immediately afterwards.

If they do not mate, they can live up to 90 days (that's twice as long as a worker bee!)

You can identify drones in the hive by their big round bodies and large eyes. Drones are incapable of stinging.

Queen Bees

There is one queen bee per hive - she is the mom of all the other bees. She is the only fertile member of the colony, and lays about 1,500 eggs a day during spring and summer.Queen bees are distinguished from the other members of the hive by their long abdomens and small wings. Soon after birth, queen bees will go out and have a wild weeked, where they mate with 15 or more drones over a three day period before retiring to the hive to lay eggs. The queen will not leave the hive again unless the colony swarms (looking for a new home). Although the name might imply it, a queen bee does not directly control the hive. Her sole function is to serve as the reproducer. A well-mated and well-fed queen of quality stock can lay about 1,500 eggs per day during the spring build-up-more than her own bodyweight in eggs every day. She is continuously surrounded by worker bees who meet her every need, giving her food and disposing of her waste. The attendant workers also collect and then distribute queen mandibular pheromone, a pheromone that inhibits the workers from starting queen cells.

The queen bee is able to control the sex of the eggs she lays. The queen lays a fertilized (female) or unfertilized (male)egg according to the width of the cell. Drones are raised in cells that are significantly larger than the cells used for workers. The queen fertilizes the egg by selectively releasing sperm from her spermatheca as the egg passes through her oviduct.

When the colony needs a new queen bee, they simply choose a healthy larva, hatched from an egg of the current queen, and feed it royal jelly, a special, super-nutrious food. Royal jelly, produced in the heads of young nurse bees (worker bees whose job it is to care for the larvae), helps this larva grow into a queen. Queens can lay about 1,500 eggs per day and can live from 4 to 7 years, that's up to 57 times longer than a worker bee - it's no wonder humans love adding royal jelly to their diets, too!

Life in the Hive

Contrary to popular belief, honeybees do not build an external structure that contains their hive. They love to live in hollow spaces, whether that means a hollow tree, an empty fallen log, or in a traditional man-made bee hive.