Honey Bee Facts

Species and origin

What kind of bee is the honey bee?

The honey bee kept in North America is Apis mellifera, the western or European honey bee. It is one species with many regional subspecies, often called races by beekeepers.

1. Apis mellifera has been subdivided into at least 20 recognized subspecies, or races (UF/IFAS, November 2024 revision). (Source: UF/IFAS Extension, EENY568 European Honey Bee, Mortensen, Schmehl and Ellis, rev. 2024)
2. The species occurs naturally in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and is now naturalized on every continent except Antarctica (UF/IFAS, November 2024 revision). (Source: UF/IFAS Extension, EENY568, 2024)
3. European subspecies were first brought to the Americas by early settlers in 1622 (UF/IFAS, November 2024 revision). (Source: UF/IFAS Extension, EENY568, 2024)
4. An African subspecies was introduced into the Americas in the late 1950s; its descendants are the bees known as Africanized honey bees (UF/IFAS, November 2024 revision). (Source: UF/IFAS Extension, EENY568, 2024)
5. Races commonly kept by beekeepers include Italian, Carniolan, Caucasian and Russian bees, each with its own traits (Cornell Cooperative Extension presentation, 2022). (Source: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Livermore, Honey Bees and Beekeeping, 2022)
6. A honey bee has two pairs of wings and three pairs of legs, all attached to the thorax (UF/IFAS, November 2024 revision). (Source: UF/IFAS Extension, EENY568, 2024)

Colony makeup

How many bees are in a hive, and how does the queen keep it going?

A colony has one queen, tens of thousands of female workers and, in the warm season, a few hundred or more male drones. The queen mates early in life and then lays eggs for the rest of it. Numbers rise in spring and summer and fall in autumn and winter.

1. A colony will have 20,000 to 60,000 bees in the hive, according to UC Davis extension apiculturist Elina Niño (undated presentation). (Source: UC Davis / UC ANR, Niño, Honey Bee Biology)
2. A typical colony has 1 queen, about 500 drones and 30,000 to 60,000 workers, and beekeepers aim to keep a hive at about 50,000 individuals (USDA SARE-funded lecture notes, undated). (Source: North Central SARE, Dantoin, Honey bee biology and social organization lecture notes)
3. Most bees in a colony are workers, usually 10,000 to 50,000 per hive (Cornell Cooperative Extension presentation, 2022). (Source: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Livermore, 2022)
4. In one 2024 study, colonies averaged 7.0 frames of adult bees in summer and 5.2 frames in autumn. (Source: Quinlan and Grozinger, Journal of Experimental Biology, 2024)
5. USDA advised that a colony should start winter with about 10 pounds of bees and plenty of honey to last until spring (Agriculture Handbook 335, 1967). (Source: USDA ARS, Beekeeping in the United States, Agriculture Handbook 335, 1967)
6. In fall, workers drag drones out of the nest and do not let them return, so the drones starve (USDA, 1967). (Source: USDA ARS, Agriculture Handbook 335, 1967)
7. Drones feed themselves but eat about 3 times as much as workers (SARE lecture notes, undated). (Source: North Central SARE, Dantoin lecture notes)
8. A queen can lay up to 1,500 eggs per day (UF/IFAS, November 2024 revision). (Source: UF/IFAS Extension, EENY568, 2024)
9. UC Davis gives 1,000 to 1,500 eggs each day, depending on the season; SARE lecture notes give 1,500 to 2,000. (Source: UC Davis / UC ANR, Niño; North Central SARE, Dantoin)
10. A new queen mates with about 15 drones, and all mating happens in the first 2 weeks of her life (UF/IFAS, November 2024 revision). (Source: UF/IFAS Extension, EENY568, 2024)
11. UC Davis puts the average number of drones a queen mates with at 12 to 14. (Source: UC Davis / UC ANR, Niño, Honey Bee Biology)
12. A queen's mating flight lasts about 10 to 15 minutes, about a week after she emerges; if bad weather keeps her in for about 3 weeks, she can no longer mate (SARE lecture notes). (Source: North Central SARE, Dantoin lecture notes)
13. Drones reach sexual maturity at about 2 weeks of age (UC Davis). (Source: UC Davis / UC ANR, Niño, Honey Bee Biology)
14. Drone congregation areas, where drones wait for queens, sit about 50 to 120 feet in the air and 300 to 600 feet across (Cornell Cooperative Extension, 2022). (Source: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Livermore, 2022)

Colony size changes through the year and from colony to colony, so sources give ranges rather than one number. The ranges above overlap; none of these sources reports a measured seasonal average. Mating counts differ by source (about 12 to 15 drones). Egg-laying peaks in spring and early summer and drops in fall and winter, which is why sources give ranges.

Egg to adult

How long does it take a bee to develop?

All three castes start as an egg that hatches in about 3 days. What differs is how long each spends as a larva and as a pupa sealed in its wax cell.

1. Drones have the longest development at 24 days, workers take 21 days and queens are fastest at 15 to 16 days (UF/IFAS, November 2024 revision). (Source: UF/IFAS Extension, EENY568, 2024)
2. Honey bee eggs are 1 to 1.5 mm long and hatch after 3 days (UF/IFAS, November 2024 revision). (Source: UF/IFAS Extension, EENY568, 2024)
3. The larval stage lasts 6 days for workers, 6.5 days for drones and 5.5 days for queens (UF/IFAS, November 2024 revision). (Source: UF/IFAS Extension, EENY568, 2024)
4. The pupal stage lasts 12 days for workers, 14.5 days for drones and 8 days for queens, per UF/IFAS; a North Central SARE fact sheet gives 7.5 days for queens. (Source: UF/IFAS Extension, EENY568, 2024; North Central SARE life cycle fact sheet)
5. All female larvae are fed the same diet for the first 3 days; what they are fed after that decides whether a larva becomes a worker or a queen (UC Davis). (Source: UC Davis / UC ANR, Niño, Honey Bee Biology)
6. USDA gave the same totals in 1967: 24 days for drones, 21 for workers and 16 for queens. (Source: USDA ARS, Agriculture Handbook 335, 1967)

Queen development is given as 16 days by most extension sources and as 15 to 16 days by UF/IFAS. Brood kept cooler than normal develops more slowly, so real colonies vary by a day or so.

Lifespan

How long do honey bees live?

Lifespan depends on caste and season. A summer worker wears herself out in weeks. Workers raised in late summer and fall, often called winter bees, can live for months. Queens live for years.

1. Adult workers live about 6 weeks during the peak activity periods of late spring, summer and early fall (USDA, 1967). (Source: USDA ARS, Agriculture Handbook 335, 1967)
2. A 2024 Penn State study states that in summer, worker bees typically survive for only about a month. (Source: Quinlan and Grozinger, Journal of Experimental Biology, 2024)
3. Worker honey bees in temperate regions live up to 60 days in the foraging season (peer-reviewed, 2020). (Source: Feliciano-Cardona et al., Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2020)
4. A subpopulation of workers produced at the end of summer routinely survives more than 200 days through winter in temperate regions (2020 review of earlier studies). (Source: Feliciano-Cardona et al., Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2020)
5. The 2024 Penn State paper describes the winter bee as long-lived, at more than 8 months. (Source: Quinlan and Grozinger, Journal of Experimental Biology, 2024)
6. A North Central SARE fact sheet gives about 5 to 7 weeks for workers in summer and up to 5 to 6 months in winter. (Source: North Central SARE, life cycle of honey bees fact sheet)
7. USDA put a queen's life expectancy at about a year, with some queens reported to live up to 6 years (1967). (Source: USDA ARS, Agriculture Handbook 335, 1967)
8. UC Davis gives a queen lifespan of 1 to 5 years; the SARE fact sheet says often 1 to 2 years in managed hives. (Source: UC Davis / UC ANR, Niño; North Central SARE fact sheet)
9. USDA said drones live about 8 weeks during the active season (1967); a 2019 study cites an estimate (Page and Peng, 2001) that drones live at most 20 to 40 days. (Source: USDA ARS, Agriculture Handbook 335, 1967; Martin et al., Journal of Experimental Biology, 2019)
10. Earlier studies of workers kept in cages found average lifespans of 23 to 42 days, as summarized in a 2019 paper. (Source: Martin et al., Journal of Experimental Biology, 2019)

Drone figures conflict. The 1967 USDA handbook says about 8 weeks in the active season; a 2019 Journal of Experimental Biology paper cites an estimate of at most 20 to 40 days. Either way, drones do not survive winter in a colony, because workers expel them in fall.

Division of labor

What worker bees do at each age

Workers change jobs as they age: cleaning cells, feeding larvae, building comb, guarding, and finally foraging. The ages overlap and shift with the colony's needs.

1. Workers feed larvae at about 3 to 15 days of age, on average at about 10 days (American Bee Journal, 2015). (Source: American Bee Journal (trade magazine), Tasks of Worker Bees, October 2015)
2. Workers build comb at about 12 to 23 days of age, on average at about 16 days (American Bee Journal, 2015). (Source: American Bee Journal, October 2015)
3. Guard duty falls at about 15 to 28 days of age, on average at about 19 days (American Bee Journal, 2015). (Source: American Bee Journal, October 2015)
4. The average worker forages for only about 4 to 5 days before dying (American Bee Journal, 2015). (Source: American Bee Journal, October 2015)
5. A single nurse bee rears the equivalent of 2 to 3 larvae during its life, and a cell may be visited 5,000 or more times while its larva grows (American Bee Journal, 2015). (Source: American Bee Journal, October 2015)
6. MAAREC summarizes the worker's adult life as about 3 weeks as a hive bee followed by about 3 weeks as a field bee (2004). (Source: Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium, Publication 1.4, 2004)
7. In a 2009 study, foragers weighed 76.0 mg on average (57 bees) versus 133 mg for nurses (40 bees), making foragers about 43% lighter. (Source: Vance et al., Journal of Experimental Biology, 2009)
8. Young nurse bees 3 to 5 days old feed worker larvae beebread, and nurses 6 to 11 days old feed royal jelly to queen larvae (Te Ara, New Zealand government encyclopedia). (Source: Te Ara, Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Beekeeping)

Age ranges are averages. A colony that loses its foragers can push young bees into foraging early, and nurse bees can keep nursing longer when brood is plentiful.

Foraging and flight

How far and how fast do bees fly?

Foragers usually work within a mile or two of home, but distance changes with the season and with what is in bloom. Flight speed has been measured directly; wingbeat frequency has been measured with high-speed video.

1. In a 1963 study, ground speed was about 7.5 m/s (about 17 mph) for unloaded bees and 6.5 m/s (about 15 mph) for loaded bees. (Source: Wenner, Journal of Apicultural Research, 1963, via Harvard BioNumbers)
2. Honey bees hover with a high wingbeat frequency of about 230 beats per second and a short stroke of about 90 degrees (2005). (Source: Altshuler et al., PNAS, 2005)
3. A 2009 study measured hovering wingbeat frequencies (statistically adjusted means) of 233.7 Hz in nurse bees and 229.1 Hz in foragers. (Source: Vance et al., Journal of Experimental Biology, 2009)
4. Decoding 5,097 waggle dances in a rural-urban landscape, University of Sussex researchers found mean foraging distance rose from 493 m in spring to 2,156 m (about 1.3 miles) in summer, then fell to 1,275 m in autumn (2014). (Source: Couvillon, Schürch and Ratnieks, PLoS ONE, 2014)
5. The same study found colonies used about 0.8 km² in spring, 15.2 km² in summer and 5.1 km² in autumn (2014). (Source: Couvillon, Schürch and Ratnieks, PLoS ONE, 2014)
6. In San Diego, a 2012 UC San Diego master's thesis that decoded 235 pollen foragers' waggle dances from 3 observation colonies found a mean foraging distance of 1,217.5 m and a median of 928.7 m. (Source: Park, UC San Diego MS thesis, 2012)
7. That San Diego study found mean distances of 640 m in the dormant season, 1,044 m in the growth season and 1,747 m in the dry season (2012). (Source: Park, UC San Diego MS thesis, 2012)
8. Honey bees generally forage at distances of less than 6 km (about 3.7 miles), per a classic 1982 study cited in a 2018 paper. (Source: Minahan and Brunet, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2018, citing Visscher and Seeley, 1982)
9. In RFID tracking work, honey bees found their way home from 13 km away (Pahl et al., 2011, cited in 2018). (Source: Minahan and Brunet, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2018)
10. A forager's crop, when full of nectar, holds about 50% of her body weight (Cornell Cooperative Extension, 2022). (Source: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Livermore, 2022)
11. Foraging honey bees cover an average of 59 km (about 37 miles) per day, per a 1982 study cited in Apidologie (2009). (Source: Brodschneider et al., Apidologie, 2009, citing Neukirch, 1982)
12. UC Davis says workers forage up to 5 miles from the hive. (Source: UC Davis / UC ANR, Niño, Honey Bee Biology)

Popular flight-speed figures vary: the National Honey Board says about 15 mph, University of Illinois Extension says 12 to 15 mph, and NASA HoneyBeeNet says about 20 mph. The measured values from Wenner (1963), about 15 mph loaded and 17 mph unloaded, sit in the middle. Foraging distances from the Sussex study and San Diego reflect those landscapes and may differ elsewhere. I could not find a primary source for the number of foraging trips per day.

Communication and senses

The waggle dance, vision and pheromones

Bees share information two main ways: by dancing on the comb and by chemical signals called pheromones. Their eyes are tuned to a different range of light than ours.

1. Karl von Frisch shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen for discoveries on individual and social behavior patterns. (Source: Nobel Prize press release, Karolinska Institutet, 1973)
2. For food more than about 50 m from the hive, a forager performs a waggle dance; for nearer food she performs a round dance (Nobel press release, 1973). (Source: Nobel Prize press release, 1973)
3. The direction of the dance's straight run tells hive bees the direction of the food relative to the sun, and the wagging tells distance (Nobel press release, 1973). (Source: Nobel Prize press release, 1973)
4. When the sun is hidden, bees can still find direction by analyzing polarized ultraviolet light (Nobel press release, 1973). (Source: Nobel Prize press release, 1973)
5. Decoding more than 5,000 dances over 2 years across about 94 km², Sussex researchers found average foraging distances under 1 km in March and April and 2 to 3 km in July and August (2014). (Source: Ratnieks, British Bee Journal, 2014)
6. Of 5,484 decoded dances to natural forage, 16.8% were for pollen and 83.2% for nectar or other non-pollen sources (2015). (Source: Couvillon et al., Apidologie, 2015)
7. Bees have 5 eyes (NASA HoneyBeeNet, citing Texas A&M University). (Source: NASA HoneyBeeNet, citing Texas A&M University)
8. Honey bee vision is more sensitive to light in the ultraviolet range, and drones have large eyes for spotting queens in flight (Cornell Cooperative Extension, 2022). (Source: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Livermore, 2022)
9. Honey bees use more than 50 different pheromones, produced by about 15 different glands on workers' bodies (Cornell Cooperative Extension, 2022). (Source: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Livermore, 2022)
10. Brood pheromone acts as a primer pheromone that supports protein synthesis in workers' hypopharyngeal glands (2020). (Source: Feliciano-Cardona et al., Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2020)

Facet counts per compound eye and the exact color sensitivities of bee photoreceptors are widely quoted, but I could not verify them from a primary source, so they are left out.

Honey and wax

How bees make honey and beeswax

Nectar is mostly water. Bees add enzymes and fan their wings to evaporate it until it is thick enough to keep. Wax is made by young workers from glands on the underside of the abdomen, and it costs the colony a lot of sugar.

1. Nectar can contain up to 80% water; fanning by bees reduces honey's water content to around 18% (Mississippi State University Extension). (Source: Mississippi State University Extension, How Is Honey Made?)
2. Cornell Cooperative Extension gives nectar as 70% to 80% water, which must drop below 18% for honey to be stable (2022). (Source: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Livermore, 2022)
3. The Canada Agriculture and Food Museum gives nectar as about 70% water and finished honey as about 17% water. (Source: Ingenium, Canada Agriculture and Food Museum)
4. USDA's grade standard requires Grade A extracted honey to be at least 81.4% soluble solids, which means no more than 18.6% water (standard effective 1985). (Source: USDA AMS, United States Standards for Grades of Extracted Honey, 1985)
5. Foragers add the enzyme invertase to nectar as they swallow it, which begins breaking down its sugars (Mississippi State University Extension). (Source: Mississippi State University Extension)
6. A strong colony may collect and use 50 to 100 pounds of pollen in a season (USDA, 1967). (Source: USDA ARS, Agriculture Handbook 335, 1967)
7. Comb wax is made by 4 pairs of wax glands on abdominal segments 4 through 7, which are most productive in workers 12 to 18 days old and have degenerated by about day 21. (Source: Collison, Bee Culture, Beeswax, Wax Glands)
8. For wax secretion to occur, the hive must be at 33 to 36°C (91 to 97°F), per Te Ara, New Zealand's government encyclopedia. (Source: Te Ara, Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Beekeeping)
9. Te Ara estimates that a kilogram of beeswax comb takes as much food as producing 8 kilograms of honey. (Source: Te Ara, Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Beekeeping)
10. The British Beekeepers Association gives two estimates on one page: about 6 pounds, and 8 to 10 pounds, of honey per pound of wax. (Source: British Beekeepers Association, Beeswax)
11. In a 1992 Rhodes University study of the Cape honey bee subspecies, wax secretion peaked at 9 days of age. (Source: Muller, PhD thesis, Rhodes University, 1992)

Two popular figures, that bees visit about 2 million flowers and fly about 55,000 miles to make one pound of honey, appear on National Honey Board, University of Illinois Extension and NASA HoneyBeeNet pages, and a 2011 UC ANR post attributes them to bee breeder Susan Cobey. None of these pages cites a measurement study, and I found none, so treat them as rough estimates. The same is true of the 1/12 teaspoon lifetime figure. The National Honey Board says a bee visits 50 to 100 flowers per trip, while a 2022 Cornell Cooperative Extension presentation says about 1,000 blossoms to fill a crop; the gap shows how loose these estimates are. Wax-to-honey ratios also vary, from about 6:1 to 10:1, and depend on how the estimate was made.

Nest climate and swarms

Brood temperature, winter clusters and swarming

A colony controls its own climate. Workers heat the brood nest with their flight muscles and cool it by fanning. In winter they cluster. In spring, strong colonies reproduce by swarming.

1. Honey bees regulate brood nest temperature within about 33 to 36°C (91 to 97°F), according to a 2010 paper that also gives 32 to 36°C in its text. (Source: Stabentheiner, Kovac and Brodschneider, PLoS ONE, 2010)
2. The optimal temperature for brood development is 35°C (95°F), and eggs and pupae can develop between 29 and 38°C (2023 study citing earlier work). (Source: Zhu et al., Frontiers in Physiology, 2023)
3. Workers make heat with their thoracic flight muscles; at 15°C, 47.6% (654 of 1,374) of bees older than 2 days on the brood nest were heating, versus 18.2% (46 of 253) of younger bees (2010). (Source: Stabentheiner, Kovac and Brodschneider, PLoS ONE, 2010)
4. Brood nest temperatures are more stable in colonies whose queen mated with several drones than in colonies sired by one drone (2004). (Source: Jones, Myerscough, Graham and Oldroyd, Science, 2004)
5. In winter, bees must keep the surface of the cluster above the cold-paralysis threshold of 10 to 12°C (50 to 54°F) (2020). (Source: Feliciano-Cardona et al., Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2020)
6. When a colony swarms, the old queen and about two-thirds of the adult workers leave, and the colony raises 10 to 20 daughter queens (UF/IFAS, November 2024 revision). (Source: UF/IFAS Extension, EENY568, 2024)
7. Swarms frequently move at least 300 m from the parent colony to a new nest site (1977). (Source: Seeley and Morse, Psyche, 1977)
8. Wild colonies choose cavities of about 2 to 20 gallons, often 6 to 20 feet above the ground (Cornell Cooperative Extension, 2022). (Source: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Livermore, 2022)

Brood temperature ranges are given as 32 to 36°C or 33 to 36°C depending on the paper; both describe the same tightly held band.

Questions

Frequently asked questions

Keep reading

Related on this site

• Honey bee anatomy in 3D
• The role of the queen bee
• What a worker bee does
• What a drone bee does
• How bees make honeycomb
• What is royal jelly?

How this page was made

Methodology & sources

Every fact on this page was traced to a primary source (a government data release, a university research or extension publication, a professional medical body or a peer-reviewed paper) and checked against the original document. Data years are given where they differ from publication years. Where reputable sources disagree, both figures are shown. Sources are named in plain text next to each fact.

• UF/IFAS Extension, EENY568 European Honey Bee (November 2024 revision)
• UC Davis / UC ANR, Elina Niño, Honey Bee Biology
• USDA ARS, Beekeeping in the United States, Agriculture Handbook 335 (1967)
• USDA AMS, United States Standards for Grades of Extracted Honey (1985)
• North Central SARE (USDA NIFA), honey bee biology lecture notes and life cycle fact sheet
• Cornell Cooperative Extension, Honey Bees and Beekeeping presentation (2022)
• Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium (MAAREC), Publication 1.4 (2004)
• Mississippi State University Extension
• University of Illinois Extension (2017)
• UC ANR Bug Squad (2011)
• NASA HoneyBeeNet, citing Texas A&M University
• National Honey Board
• American Bee Journal (trade magazine), Tasks of Worker Bees (2015)
• Bee Culture, Collison, Beeswax, Wax Glands
• Harvard BioNumbers, citing Wenner, Journal of Apicultural Research (1963)
• Altshuler et al., PNAS (2005)
• Vance et al., Journal of Experimental Biology (2009)
• Martin et al., Journal of Experimental Biology (2019)
• Quinlan and Grozinger, Journal of Experimental Biology (2024)
• Feliciano-Cardona et al., Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (2020)
• Couvillon, Schürch and Ratnieks, PLoS ONE (2014)
• Couvillon et al., Apidologie (2015)
• Ratnieks, British Bee Journal (2014)
• Minahan and Brunet, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (2018)
• Brodschneider et al., Apidologie (2009)
• Park, UC San Diego MS thesis (2012)
• Stabentheiner, Kovac and Brodschneider, PLoS ONE (2010)
• Zhu et al., Frontiers in Physiology (2023)
• Jones et al., Science (2004)
• Seeley and Morse, Psyche (1977)
• Muller, Rhodes University PhD thesis (1992)
• Nobel Prize press release (1973)
• Te Ara, Encyclopedia of New Zealand
• British Beekeepers Association
• Ingenium, Canada Agriculture and Food Museum