Honey bees (Apis mellifera,) are also known as the European Honey Bee or the Western Honey Bee.

Anything you call them, honey bees are amazing!

Honey bees are found on every continent except Antarctica, and surprisingly, are not native to North America. European settlers were the first to bring honey bees to the new world, and we’ve been loving them ever since. We rely on these miraculous insects to pollinate a good amount of our global food supply, and to also be our only source of honey. 

There are 3 types of bees in a honeybee hive:

• The queen. She is literally the mother of the hive. She has a few jobs, but her main one is to lay eggs. She lays up to 2,500 eggs a day, but averages around 1,000 each day during the spring and summer. She chooses whether to lay a fertilized egg, which will become her daughter, a worker bee;  or whether to lay an unfertilized egg, which will become her son, a drone. The pheromones that excrete from her body help to control the work and the feeling of the hive. Her pheromones signal different behaviours and instincts from her daughters.

Once the cool weather sets in, the drones are only a drain on the winter resources of the hive, so they are literally kicked out of the hive. His sisters, the workers, will force all the drones out and then guard the entrance to ensure they don’t reenter. The drones will do their best to sneak back in, but the workers will always win this battle. If a drone becomes persistent, his sisters will literally rip him apart and throw him over the edge of the hive. Savage, I know, but all honey bees make their decisions based on what is best for the whole hive. They have stocky bodies that are covered with many hairs to which pollen adheres.