Answering Bee Questions

In doing field work, my colleagues and I get to talk to a lot of people! Here are some questions we get asked about bees that you may be wondering as well!

Are all bees black and yellow?

Bees come in all sorts of wonderful colors! Greens, blues, reds, oranges, and even purples! The poster below shows some of this great variety. Yes, these are all bees!

Graphic by Melissa Platsko using images taken by Sam Droege (USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center; public domain).

Do bumble bees sting? Or do they just bite?

Bumble bees do sting and they will sting you if greatly provoked. In bumble bees, this usually takes a fair amount of provocation (such as being squished or incessantly poked) as they are very docile. A bumble bee sting is about as painful as a honey bee sting, so you will know if you've been stung!

Do all bees die if they sting you?

Nope! The only bee that will die if it stings you is the honey bee. All other bees have a different mechanism on their stings which would allow them to sting you multiple times.

How many bee species are there?

There is a whole world of bees out there with over 21,000 different bee species! There are 7 honey bee species, 250 bumble bee species, and a great many others.

Are bumble bees adult versions of honey bees?

All of the bees you see flying around are adult bees! Meaning, they have stopped growing and won't grow up into a different form or size. Baby bees actually look like little grubs or cocoons, which you should typically not see.

What is honey? Is it actually bee vomit?

Honey is flower nectar that bees have processed. Honey bees collect nectar in a structure called a crop or honey stomach. When within the crop, different enzymes are added to the nectar to break down some of the larger sugars found in flower nectar like sucrose. Once a foraging bee has returned to the hive, it regurgitates the flower nectar to bees within the hive. The hive workers then regurgitate (multiple times), digest, and evaporate the water out of the flower nectar until it reaches a point where the final product has a water content that is less than 18%.

Do all bees make honey?

Not all bees make honey! There are two types of honey producers in the world: species in the genus Apis and species within the tribe Meliponini (this is just a group of bees that are commonly known as stingless bees). Apis bees (almost exclusively the western honey bee: Apis meliifera) produce the honey you can find in most supermarkets. Comparitively, bees within Meliponini tend to produce a honey that has different tasting notes and consistency compared to Apis mellifera honey. Other bees that collect nectar, like bumble bees, don't process it as much as these bees and only store very small amounts of flower nectar for personal consumption or for mixing with pollen to create bee bread!

Do bees all live in hives?

Most bees actually live in the ground or small natural cavities! Most ground nesting bees and cavity nesting bees are solitary. This means that one female will lay eggs, forage for food, and provision supplies for a few developing bee babies within small nests (usually of only 5-10 offspring). Bumble bees have larger nests, but these nests are lumpy and uneven and are not the ordered structures we see in honey b