HONEY BEES (Apis mellifera)
Biology
- Adults can be ½ to 5/8 inches long. Queens can be 5/8 to ¾ inches in length.
- The queen’s abdomen extends well beyond the wing tips.
- Honey bees have a barbed stinger except for the queen who has a smooth stinger.
- Color is orange-brown to black.
- Body, including the eyes, is covered by pale hairs.
- First segment of hind tarsus is enlarged and flat.
- Hives are placed in sheltered places, safe from weather conditions, i.e. a hollow tree, or a hollow wall.
- Drones only live for a few weeks and lack a stinger.
Distribution/Habits
- Produce honey, beeswax and pollinate many crop plants
- Social bee with a true persistent colony that endures for years; colonies may contain 20,000 to 80,000 bees
- Queens, workers (sterile females) and drones (males) exist in the hives, but not at all times of the year.
- Only one egg-laying queen exists in each hive.
- Workers forage for nectar, produce wax and honey and protect the hive.
- Drones mate with virgin queens after they leave the hive.
- Honey bees will sting; when they do the stinger, venom, sac, muscle and other body parts are torn from the body and remain in the victim driving the stinger deeper into the victim permitting more time to discharge the toxin.
- Shortly after stinging, the Honey bee dies.
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