Busy Bees    

Honeybees are social insects that live in hives. Like all insects, bees have six legs, a three-part body, a pair of antennae, compound eyes, jointed legs, and a hard exoskeleton. The three body parts are the head, thorax, and abdomen (the tail end).

Bees can fly about 15 mph (24 kph). They eat nectar (a sweet liquid made by flowers) which they turn into honey.

In the process of going from flower to flower to collect nectar, pollen from many plants gets stuck on the bee's pollen baskets (hairs on the hind legs). Pollen is also rubbed off of flowers. This pollinates many flowers (fertilizing them and producing seeds).

We eat the honey that bees make and use wax from their nests to make candles, cosmetics, crayons and other products.

All the members of the hive are related to each other. There are three types of honey bees:

• the queen - the queen's job is to lay eggs. A queen can lay 2,000 eggs a day.
• workers - females who gather food, make honey, build the six-sided honeycomb, tend eggs, and guard the hive. Fertilized eggs become worker bees.
• drones - males who mate with the queen. Unfertilized eggs become drones.

Each colony has only one queen, only a few drones, and as many as 60,000 workers. Bees undergo complete metamorphosis. The queen lays an egg in a cell in the wax comb (all the immature bees are called the brood). The egg hatches into a worm-like larva, which eventually pupates into an adult bee.