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Honey bees


Photos by Ron Hemberger and Bill Claff

Apis mellifera – the honey bee (family Apidae)
by Mace Vaughan and Lisa Schonberg (Xerces Society) and Gretchen LeBuhn (SFSU)

Species summary: Apis melliferra is native to the Old World. It has been distributed throughout the world by human activity, and was introduced into the Americas in 1622. Colonies of this species are widely managed for pollination purposes. Its genus, Apis, contains 11 species, but the honey bee we are all familiar with is all a single species, Apis mellifera.

Floral relationships: Honey bees are extremely general foragers. However, on an individual bee basis, they are inferior to many native bees as pollinators. They cannot buzz pollinate like many native bees that vibrate their wings at a specific frequency that releases the flower’s pollen (Mich 2000). In addition, honeybees often rob flowers of their nectar without even coming in contact with the flower’s reproductive parts. They do, however, give farmers the advantage of having easily managed and portable colonies.

Nesting habits: Honey bees nest socially in perennial colonies. It nests in relatively large cavities (ideally around 40 liters), such as hives or hollow trees. They make vertical combs of hexagonal cells of wax they secrete from their special glands. In addition to wax, the worker bees also build with propolis, which is a mixture of wax and resin (O’Toole & Raw 1999). Honey bees have morphologically distinct castes: workers, male reproductives, and a queen. There is division of labor according to caste. The queen’s primary role is egg-laying, and worker bees feed her. Jobs are assigned to worker bees according to age. Young worker bees are “house bees;” they stay in the nest and attend to the young, clean the nest, and take care of the queen. They also receive food brought in by foragers. Later in life, they become “guard bees” and protect the nest entrance. They eventually work as “field bees” and forage for food. New colonies form by fission; a new queen is raised and the old queen leaves the hive with a portion of the worker force from the “mother hive”.

Diagnostic characteristics: Honey bees are medium sized, moderately hairy, elongate bees with hairy eyes (Michener 2000). They vary in color from black to amber brown (Michener 1994). There are striking morphological differences between female workers, the queen, and males. The queen is much larger than the others. Males have large eyes and congregate in areas where they fly together and mate with new emerged queens who find these aggregations of males (Michener 2000).

Similar taxa:

Known conservation concerns: Since the middle of the 20th Century, the number of managed honey bees colonies has been in decline. Since the 1980s, the primary cause of decline has been introduced pests and diseases. In 2006, we began to see evidence of a new problem in “colony collapse disorder,” which is potentially attributable to some combination of a newly introduced disease and/or pesticide use.

Interesting fact: Honey bee workers exert tight control over the temperature of their hive; the brood cells must be between 34.5º and 35.5º C for optimal brood development. Worker bees generate heat by shivering their flight muscles. To cool the hive during hot summer days, workers collect water or fan cool air into the nest (O’Toole & Raw 1999).

Additional resources: Winston (1987), Seeley (1995)
There are wonderful websites about honey bees. Wikipedia does a great job describing alot of the biology of this important species

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