Honey Bees

Introduction  

Honeybees are a part of the insect family. Like most insects, they are small and have six little legs.

What Do They Look Like? Honeybees have black and yellow stripes on their abdomen. They have three body parts-  the abdomen, head and the thorax. They also have a pair of compound eyes on each side of their head. Honeybees have a pair of straight antennae on top of their heads and they have four wings.They also have six legs which have something called a pollen basket on them. Only the worker bees have a small but sharp stinger on their abdomen. Where Do They Live? Honeybees live in groups called colonies that stay in small boxes called beehives. Colonies are groups made out of drones, worker bees and a queen bee. Honeybees can live all over the world except Antarctica and the North Pole,. They also can live anywhere that is not too hot or not too cold, and any place that has flowers. Giving Birth Drone bees mate with the queen bee to make more bees that are at first eggs then they pupate into small worm-like insects that are called larva. They are then stored in the wax cells. Honeybees are metamorphosis which means they go from being an egg to larva until they grow into an adult bee. How Long Do Honey Bees Live? Queen bees  can live for several years and drone bees and worker bees live for a few months, or even a few weeks! What Do They Do? Worker bees fly around looking for flowers to collect nectar and pollen from them. Honeybees use their straw-like tongues to collect the nectar from the flowers. They can fly up to 24 kmph.They can also flap their wings 11’000 times per minute. Nectar is collected and stored in the bee’s honey stomach. They actually have two stomachs called the honey stomach and their ordinary stomach. Honeybees need nectar to make honey.They get nectar from flowers.They need to visit 1000 flowers to fill their honey stomach. Finally, they have finished collecting all the nectar and fly  back to the hive. When the honeybee returns to the hive, it has to give the nectar to another worker bee. The other worker bee gets its straw-like tongue and sticks it down the other bee’s mouth and gets the nectar out of the other bee’s honey stomach. They chew it for half about half an hour. The worker bees then spread the nectar around the honeycomb and fan it with their wings until it is hard and thick. Worker bees then spread wax over the honey, then it’s ready for the beekeeper to collect.    

How Do They Communicate With Each Other? Honey bees do dances to tell the other bees which way to go for flowers. There is one dance called the waggle dance to tell the other bees which way to fly for flowers.