Welcome to the fascinating world of bees! These tiny buzzing workers are much more than just honey producers. They play a crucial role in ecosystems and deserve all our admiration.
Imagine a world without bees: fewer flowers, a dramatic decline in fruit and vegetable production, and a much less colorful nature. In fact, nearly 75% of food crops depend on pollination, and bees are the undisputed champions! They carry pollen from flower to flower, ensuring plant reproduction and the diversity of our food supply. Honey, that golden delight, is another precious gift from bees. Did you know that it would take a honeybee about 5,000 round trips between the hive and flowers to produce a single teaspoon of honey? A real feat that deserves to be savored!
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On this page, we will introduce you to these fascinating creatures, their lives, and behaviour.
Dr Alice D. Bridges
Postdoc, University of Sheffield, UK
Dr Noureddine Adjlane
M'hamed Bougara University of Boumerdes, Algeria
WRITTEN BY
The social lives of bees
When we think of social bees, honeybees are easily the first to come to mind: a truly eusocial society complete with a rigid caste system. Here, every bee has a specific role. The queen lays thousands of eggs, while her daughter worker bees feed the larvae, build the honeycombs, and collect nectar. Meanwhile her sons, the drones, hope (with a bit of luck!) to mate with a new queen. But there are a vast array of different bee species, from bumblebees to stingless bees, and many of these also live social lives.
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Did you know that the first bees were most likely solitary? They appeared in the Cretaceous period, over 100 million years ago: once predatory wasps, they began instead to collect nectar from flowering plants. Now, there are over 20,000 known species of bee, grouped into seven families…
Simple phylogenetic tree showing the evolutionary history of bees.
Adapted from museumoftheearth.org.
The largest and most well-known of these families is the Apidae, which contains honeybees, bumblebees and stingless bees: many of these species have social lifestyles. But social living has evolved multiple times among bees. For example, in the “sweat bees” of the Halictidae family, eusociality has arisen on several independent occasions. Some species can even be solitary or eusocial – in the case of the orange-legged furrow bee, Halictus rubicundus, this depends on their altitude and latitude!
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Even bees that tend towards the solitary can be more social than we might think. Communality, where two unrelated female bees each raise their own offspring in the same nest, is often found among the Adrenidae bees. The leafcutter and mason bees of the Megachilidae family might each form their own individual nests, but some species prefer to build them alongside each other. In the case of the black mud bee, Megachile parietina, hundreds of females have been recorded building nests in a single metal beam in a barn!
Tiny brains - fascinating behaviour
With a brain the size of a poppy seed, social bees produce some of the most intricate behaviour in the entire animal kingdom. They are well-known for building their elaborate nests cooperatively: for the crisp hexagons of honeybee comb, and the spiral structures built by some stingless bees. Honeybees are also famous for their waggle dance language, which allows them to accurately communicate the distance and direction of flowers to their nestmates. Bumblebees are just as efficient pollinators, though: they can use vibrations to “sonicate” flowers and cause them to release pollen. They are also capable of detecting electric fields around flowers, which they can use to help them decide which to visit. Recently, researchers have found that bees not only play if given the chance, rolling balls around for fun: they may also experience pain. It is clear there is still much more for us to learn about their abilities: we are only just starting to understand what they might be capable of.
Bees under threat
Unfortunately, these incredible insects are in danger. Pesticides, diseases, climate change, and habitat destruction threaten their survival. Fortunately, everyone can take action to protect them: plant nectar-rich flowers, avoid chemical products in your garden, or even set up an insect hotel to provide shelter.
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So, the next time you hear a bee buzzing nearby, don’t panic! Watch it, admire its work, and remember that it helps create a more beautiful, colorful, and flavorful world.
But welcome to the wonderful world of bees… And most importantly, let’s protect them!
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