By volume, weight, or space occupied on frames. The size or weight difference between strains of honey bees – Italian, Russian,...

Normally there is only one and she will battle with any other queen intruding or introduced into the hive in a stinging to the death...

Yes, if the bee that stings is a worker bee, she will die shortly after stinging because the sting assembly separates from her body...

The stinger should be removed as soon as possible by scraping it out, such as by using a finger nail or credit card. Squeezing the...

Bees secrete an anesthetic, 2-heptanone, from their mandibular glands. When guard bees break through the outer body covering of...

The armor of a bee is in overlapping segments. The abdomen of the bee has one row of rigid overlapping plate on its dorsal side (back)...

Bees can not pant; they don’t have lungs. However, bees do have membranes in their abdomen that act as diaphragms and aid in the flow of...

They hear with the subgenual organs on all 6 legs as well as Johnston’s organs on the antennae. Their brains processing the sensory input...

Two ways: from the production and consumption of bee bread and from the jelly fed to them by young bees at the jelly producing stage of...

All castes (worker, queen, drone) emit pheromones. The tarsal gland secretion mentioned in a previous post also contains a trail...

The 2 claws or hooks on each pretarsus (end segment of each leg), grip rough or penetrable surfaces so that makes it easy to move...

Adult bees can consume nectar directly but nectar is basically sugar water, plant sugar, but is almost completely carbohydrates. Just as...

Well, actually those secretions from various glands of the young worker bees are mixed into different forms of “royal jelly”. The queen...

Apis mellifera seems to be a species obsessed with efficiency and temporal polyethism is efficient. Why is temporal polyethism so...

Honey bees have taken social behavior to the highest level seen in the animal world. Social cooperation to the Extreme! Honey bees are...

7 out of 8 swarms are expected to not survive their first winter unless captured and rehived by a beekeeper. A few beekeepers in rural...

Most 'feral' swarms are escapees from managed hives. The closer you are to commercial apiaries and to the high density of hobby...

The European honey bee, aka the Western honey bee, aka Apis mellifera, aka our beloved honey bee, evolved with European plants over...

Dr. Samuel Ramsey showed this feeding on adults as well as on bee larvae in the capped stage and presented his research in the youtube...

Until recently, it was widely published that V. destructor fed on the hemolymph ("bee blood") of capped bee larvae as they metamorphosed...