The Hymenoptera contain most of the social insects, the only social insects not in this order are the termites. Social insects have three major traits:

1.Individuals of the same species co-operate in caring for the young.
2. There is a reproductive division of labour.
3. There is an overlap of at least 2 generations in life stages capable of contributing to colony behaviour.

This page contains information about honey bees.

Click here for bumblebees
Mason, carpenter, leafcutter and other bees
Wasps
Sawflies

Above is the honeybee body which has the typical bee shape. There are around 20 000 species of bee world wide. Recently a 100 million year old bee was found fossilised in amber. Preliminary studies of this bee confirm the belief that bee are descended from wasps.

The Apis mellifera (honeybee) genome has been published recently. It is the fourth insect to have its genome sequenced, the others are the mosquito, fruit fly and the silk moth. The colour of honeybees varies according to the species, but is usually brown and covered in brown/gray hairs. The honeybee is not nearly as hairy as the bumblebee. The body of the queen is similar to that of the workers, but she is a little larger.

There are around 60 000 - 70 000 bees in the average hive. The queen and workers (all female), and drones (males) are produced when needed. Usually just a few hundred drones are produced at a time.

One or more drones fertilises the queen during the nuptial flight. She will store enough sperm from this mating in her spermatheca to last her lifetime. The queen can lay around 2000 eggs per day, and can live for five years, so can lay over one million eggs in her lifetime.

The eggs hatch into maggot-like grubs (see right above) and are fed by the workers. The workers gather pollen and nectar from flowers. Honey bees, like bumblebees get all their food from flowers. The honeybee worker's tongue is covered in tiny hairs and is long and flexible, so is good for sucking nectar from flowers (see above right).

The nectar is carried back to the hive in the stomach of the bee, then it stored and becomes honey as the water in the nectar evaporates and the sugar is more concentrated. Pollen is carried back to the hive in pollen baskets in the bee's hindmost legs, (see right).

Honey bees have the typical hexagonally faceted compound eyes of insects, each eye has around 6300 ommatidia (facets).

Differences between bumblebees and honey bees.
There are some very important differences between the bumblebee life cycle and the honeybee life cycle. There is no mouth-to-mouth exchange of food between adult bumblebees, nor do adults groom each other or the queen as is seen in honeybees. As yet no equivalent to the honeybee "queen substance" has been found; in honeybee hives workers licking the queen and each other pass the "queen substance" throughout the hive, and this pheromonal control enables the queen to maintain dominance. Bumblebee queens appear to maintain dominance purely by aggressive behaviour.

With bumblebees the colony is started anew each year with only the new queens surviving the winter. Whereas the honeybee hive continues year after year, even though there may have been a change of queens during the summer. During the cold winter months the honey bee workers cluster around the queen deep in the hive to maintain a high enough temperature to survive, they also feed on their store of honey. So when the weather warms enough for them to forage there are already a large number of workers. Honeybee queens never forage, they live their lives inside the hive only emerging to found a new colony when they swarm with a full compliment of workers. Bumblebees in temperate climates never swarm, however there are a few tropical species that initiate new colonies by swarming.

Royal jelly is inappropriately named. Most royal jelly production in a hive is fed to ordinary female worker honeybees. It is a mixture of two liquids produced in the head glands of nurse worker bees - the hypopharyngeal and mandibular glands. Larvae that are destined to be workers are fed for two days on royal jelly. Larva that are destined to be queens are fed all their larval lives on royal jelly. Royal jelly is rich in amino acids, vitamins and sugars.