Queen
- In a normal colony, only the queen lays eggs.
- She can lay up to 1,500 eggs in one day.
- A queen can live for several years.
- She does not die when she stings.
Learn
Learn about bees
Follow one honey bee through its life, from a tiny egg to the flowers.
Turn it, tap it, and look inside.
Worker honey bee Apis mellifera Workers are 10 to 15 millimeters long.
From egg to bee
Day 0 to 21
Bees build comb, a wall of small wax cells.
Every worker starts as one egg in one of those cells.
Drag the slider to watch it grow, day by day.
A comb cell, cut open to show the young bee inside
Drag the slider to watch it grow, day by day.
Day 0: Egg.
Day 0. The queen lays one egg in each cell. It looks like a tiny grain of rice. It stands up at first, then leans over.
A queen grows faster. She takes about 16 days from egg to adult.
Meet the bee
Day 21
A new worker has three body parts: a head, a thorax, and an abdomen.
Bees eat nectar, a sweet juice, and pollen, a dust from flowers.
Tap a number to read about that part. Choose Inside to see the parts inside its body.
3D bee specimen
Choose a part from the list or tap a number on the bee.
Choose a part from the list or tap a number on the bee.
The parts of the bee
Head
The head holds the eyes, the antennae, and the mouthparts.
Thorax
The thorax is the middle of the body. All six legs and all four wings attach to it.
Abdomen
The abdomen is the back part of the body. It holds most of the gut, the venom sac, and the stinger. A narrow waist joins it to the thorax.
Jobs at home
First weeks
A young worker does not fly out right away. For its first few weeks, it works inside the hive.
Jobs that a worker does
- Clean the cells
- Feed the young bees
- Care for the queen
- Shape wax into comb with its jawsSee this part on the bee
- Guard the colony with its stingerSee this part on the bee
Three kinds of bee
A colony has three kinds of bee: a queen, workers, and drones.
Worker
- A worker is a female bee. Workers are the smallest of the three kinds.
- In summer, a worker lives about 6 weeks.
- A worker that grows up in the fall can live up to 6 months.
Drone
- A drone is a male bee. It is the biggest bee in the colony.
- A drone has no stinger and no pollen basket.
- Its job is to mate with a new queen from another colony.
- Nobody has seen a drone collect food from flowers.
Out to the flowers
Later
Later, the worker becomes a forager. It flies out to collect nectar, pollen, and water.
Bees visit flowers for food. Nectar gives a bee energy. Pollen gives it protein, fats, vitamins, and minerals.
While a bee feeds, pollen sticks to its body. Then the pollen moves to the next flower.
We call it pollination when pollen moves to another flower of the same kind. Many bees visit only a few kinds of flowers at a time.
7 in 8
Animals such as bees pollinate about flowering plants.
3 in 4
food crops depend, at least in part, on pollinators.
Send the bee to the flowers.
Flowers pollinated: 0
- Find flowers that bees visit
- Play Who grew my lunch?
A game for kindergarten and grade 1.
The dance and the honey
Back home
Back home, the forager can dance on the comb. The dance tells other bees where the food is.
Read the dance
- The bee runs straight and waggles its body. Scientists call this a waggle run.
- The angle of the run shows the way. Straight up the comb means: fly toward the sun.
- A longer run means the food is farther away.
- During the run, its wings buzz about 265 times each second. Other bees pick up the buzz with their antennae.
- Before and after the dance, the bee shares nectar with others, mouth to mouth.
From above
Drag the flowers around the hive.
On the comb
The run points 90 degrees to the right of straight up. The flowers are near, so the run is short.
Honey, from light to dark
Honeys run from almost clear to nearly black. Tap a mark to read about one.
Acacia honey
Bees make this honey from the nectar of black locust trees.
Color: Water white
Read about Acacia honeyA short, busy life
About 6 weeks
In summer, a worker lives about 6 weeks.
Around the world, bees are under pressure. Here are five big reasons.
Habitat loss
Bees lose the land where they feed and nest. What is left breaks into small pieces.
Intensive farming
Big farms grow one crop across huge fields, instead of many kinds of plants.
Pesticides
People use more pesticides as farmland grows. Pesticides are chemicals that kill pests.
Pests and diseases
Pests and diseases make bees weak, in hives and in the wild.
Climate change
Heat waves and changes in when flowers bloom break the link between flowers and bees.
Over 20,000 kinds of wild bees live around the world.
Keep exploring
Your turn
You followed a bee through its life. Here is where to go next.
Explore more
With a grown-up
- Find a hive near youSearch by city or state.
- Adopt a hiveSupport a community hive in your city.
- VolunteerGive your time to the bees in your city. Volunteering is free.
- Start a HiveAsk Adopt The Bees to review a community campaign in your city.
- Saving Bees trainingPractise reading a hive on a simulated colony. For adults and older students.
For older readers and grown-ups
Real data with its sources, and practice for new beekeepers.
Bee facts
- Bee anatomyStart with the basics: a worker honey bee, outside and in.
- ConservationLearn how conservation status works, what threatens bees, and which actions help.
- Pollinator plantsSearch accepted plant species worldwide.
- Honey varietiesBrowse honey variety profiles.
- Bees by countrySee documented bee records by country.
- Data sourcesSee the sources behind the Bee facts pages, and what we do not infer from them.