Honey Bee, Worker or Female honey Bee, Male Bee or Drone, The Queen Bee, Types of Bee based on Gender, Types of Bees based on Species and Apiary, Types of bee based on Stinging Habit, The Apis Florae, The Apis Cerana, The Apis Dorsata, The Apis Mellifera, Types of Bees
Honey Bee
Honey bees are originated from Europe. The ancient people brought them around the world. They are naturally not aggressive. They first try to prevent themselves and their hives from an intruder, and then sting. They are very organized and industrious and like to live together.
Different honey bees have different responsibilities based on their ages. Honey bees are mostly busy in summer and completely inactive in winter. They live long in winter because they cluster themselves to become warm.
The main suppliers of honey and beeswax for us are honey bees. On the basis of the honey bee, huge beekeeping industries are grown up all over the world. Honey bees are more social and cooperative than any other insects. Winter is a little bit harder for them.
They like to live on stored honey during winter. They gather like a ball to get warm. They eat honey from the stores in winter. The new generation of bees is capable to swarm in the hive. Learn more: Honey Bee | Characteristics, Habitat, Life Cycle, Species, Biology, & Facts
Types of Bees based on Gender.
There are three types of honey bees such as queen bee, male bee, and worker bee. Worker bees are the most industrious among these three types. Let’s see in detail three types on the next page:
Worker honey bees
Worker bees are those which you see around your garden or jungle. Worker honey bees are female. They are not sexually worthy of producing bees. They do all the works related to hives such as collecting food to deposit in the hive. They go from place to place to look for food. In a colony, most bees are worker bees, only one queen and a few male bees.
They search for foods from pollen and nectar from various flowers. They are responsible to build up and protect hives. They also keep the hive clean. By beating wings they move around the air. These are the most social bees. The lifetime of worker honey bee is 6 weeks during busy summer and 4-9 months during winter.
Queen bee
Queen bee is just a single bee in a hive. She acts as the leader of a hive. She leads all the bees. Her responsibilities are very simple but very important. She is developed for sex and producing bees. She spawns eggs and lays around them for producing the next generation in the hives. When the queen bee dies, the worker bees select a queen among them. They feed the elected worker bee a special diet.
This special diet is known as royal jelly. It makes her worthy of sex and bees production. In a word, this special food turns her fertile. The queen bee produces special kinds of chemicals. These chemicals guide the other bees and regulate their behavior and activities. The lifetime of a queen bee is a few years.
Male bees
Male bees are also known as drones. A few hundreds of drones belong to a hive. Male honey bees are generally live in the hive for the summer and springtimes. They are not worthy of living for winter times. They are expelled from here because during this time hive turns into lean survival mode.
The size of male bees is larger than females but smaller than the queen. They are only to mate with the queen and no other contribution is found in a beehive.
Types of bees based on species and Apiary
Find here types of bees on the basis of the apiary. The most popular and well-known types of bees are Apis Florae, Apis Dorsata, Apis Cerana, & Apis Mellifera.
The Apis Florae
All bees are not possible to keep for farming. Although more than a thousand types of bees are known only four types are mentioned here as they are well known and popular while the actual species of bees have been estimated at Twenty Thousand.
The Apis Florae are single comb (the cells of bees) hives for which they are remarkable. The bee of this species used to leave the hive due to a disturbance lot. So they are not comfortable to keep domestically and beekeepers don’t become interested in their habit of abandoning hives. But these are one of the honey bee species and able to store honey that can be harvested.
The Apis Dorsata
The Apis dorsata is also like the Apis florae which are not readily domesticated. They also don’t tolerate a high level of disturbance and a single comb hive. The Apis dorsata hives can be found in a dense forest on big trees above 5 meters from the ground and are well protected due to the distance from the ground.
The rock bees are another appellation of the Apis dorsata but larger than other bees in size. Both Apis florae and dorsata create their hives.
The Apis Cerana
The Apis cerana bees are also called oriental honeybees, which can be found in tropical regions, particularly active in pollination. The area covered by the Apis Cerana is larger than that covered by the Apis dorsata and florae. This species of bees can be raised and kept by human beings for harvesting honey as a hobby or commercially. These bees dwell in cavities but can be kept in domestic hives
The Apis Mellifera
The Apis mellifera is a European honey bee, that lives in cavities like the oriental bee(the Apis cerena). The European honey bees are not only found in parts of Western Europe but also in the United States, Southeast Asia. The hives of the Apis mellifera and Apis cerena are parallel combs. The Apis mellifera is very popular in Bangladesh and a favorite to beekeepers. The hive size of mellifera is bigger than cerena, which usually contains 8 combs.
This species of bees can be raised and hives can be increased by dividing the bees of the existing hive. The social hierarchy is well maintained in the Apis mellifera. The yearly production of honey from the Apis mellifera is a few times more than the Apis cerena. But from the Apis cerena, you will get the honey always in a small quantity whereas from mellifera only in the season of adequate flowers.
The Apis cerena and mellifera are easy to maintain, easy to harvest honey, rapidly growing, and profitable to keep commercially, becoming a favorite to beekeepers. Finally, we like to say that Apis mellifera is the most popular in Bangladesh.
Types of Bees based on stinging habit.
Bees are of different types, based on their nature or habit of stinging, and comfort to keep and maintain. There are about the 7 most common bee types as mentioned below:
Bumble Bee
Bumblebees are commonly known to fly around the flowers in the yard and garden usually in the spring and summer. They are not overly violent type but sting you while they feel you, the enemy. They directly help nature to crop more by pollinating plants and gathering nectar to make honey.
Hornets
Hornets are dangerous and most easily agitated and sting you even in your eyes. Their venom is very painful, so always stay at a safe distance. They nest in hives just like yellow jackets. Find here to buy a remedy for any type of bee sting: On the Go Stick Skin Soothing Pain & Itch Relief for Bug Bites, Bee Stings, Poison, Ivy Cuts, Scrapes, Bruises, Twist Up Balm.
Yellow Jackets
Due to distinctive yellow and black stripes their name is yellow jackets, usually can be found during spring and summer, around near ice cream, lemonade, barbecues & so on. They usually nest in trees or roofs of the attic in a football-shaped or teardrop-shaped by grayish paper substances which are actually chewing pieces of wood.
Honey Bees
Honey bees are the gift of nature as they help directly to pollinate your fruits, vegetables, plants, and crops; as a result, you will get more production. They collect nectar from a flower and convert it to honey. You know every flower has little or more nectar which dried automatically if not collected by honey bees.
Thus every year nature is losing million of billion tons of nectar which could be converted to honey by honey bees. Honey bees collect honey and store it in the honeycombs of their hive. Usually, beekeepers keep this type of bee.
Ground Nesting Yellow Jackets Bee
Another type of yellow jacket is the ground bee type, which lives in a nest between 2 inches & 2 feet underground, in an abandoned mole or holes of a mouse.
Wasps
They can be found during mowing grass. If you sound more they become angry and sting you as they don’t like loud mowing sounds. Wasps usually like to nest in attics, shutters, grills, even inside a mailbox or anywhere. Their sting is very painful and wasps are well known for thin body center and hanging legs when flying.
You can buy a bee-catching trap here: RESCUE! WHYTE, Non-Toxic, Reusable Trap for Wasps, Hornets, and Yellow Jackets.
Carpenter Bee
Carpenter bees will not sting you but damage your wood by drilling right through as a drill machine. It is like a bumbles bee and often makes you confused, works as if a carpenter and makes a perfect circle by chewing wood. They make their nest inside the hole of a wood/tree and lay eggs there. Learn more: Kinds of Bees – 10 Broad Shorts of Honey Bee Worldwide.
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3. Grants For Beekeeping: USDA Grants, Agricultural Grants, And Honey Bee Laws.
4. Top 10 Honeybee Images: Different Types Of Honey Bee Hives Picture – Natural And Apiary Hives.
Sources of Information
Help the Honey Bees: Haagen-Dazs,
Photo Credit – Google Images – Unrestricted,
Beekeeping news and journals,
Experience of own project.