Bees and Biology

# Queen, Worker, and Drone: The Three Castes of a Bee Colony A honey bee colony contains three kinds of bee: one queen, tens of thousands of workers, and, in the warm months, a few hundred drones. That much most people know. What surprises them is how the roles actually divide up. The queen is … Read more

# The Bee Life Cycle: From Egg to Adult, and How Long Bees Live Two questions about bees come up more than any others, and they turn out to be the same story told from two ends. How does a bee develop from an egg into the insect you see on a flower, and how … Read more

# Bee Behavior Explained: Bearding, Washboarding, Dancing, and Sleep You walk out to the hive on a warm evening and something is going on that you have never seen before. A curtain of bees hanging off the front. Or hundreds of them rocking back and forth on the outside wall in unison, like they are … Read more

# Bee Anatomy: How Many Eyes, Wings, and Legs Does a Bee Have? The questions people actually ask about bees turn out to be counting questions. How many eyes, how many wings, how many legs. They sound like trivia until you find out the answers, and then each one opens onto something genuinely odd about … Read more

# How Do Bees Make Honey? The Full Process, Step by Step Most answers to this question stop at “bees collect nectar from flowers and turn it into honey,” which is true and explains almost nothing. It skips the part where a bee carries the nectar in a stomach she does not digest with, the … Read more