About ½-inch long, honey bees are made up of three parts: a head, thorax and an abdomen. Their abdomens are striped and pointed at the tip, and they have two transparent wings. Bees appear fuzzy because of hair-like setals made of chitin (a hard substance found in the exoskeletons of most insects) that cover all three of their body segments.
Bees build elaborate nests, called hives, which are comprised of a dense matrix of hexagonal cells that make up a honeycomb of beeswax. Highly social, honey bees have a complex organization consisting of castes. Castes include queens, drones and workers. Larger than the other bees, the queen bee’s function is to lay eggs. She’s the only fertile female in the colony and rarely leaves the hive, except to mate. Male drones have no stinger, and their main function is to mate with a queen bee. Worker bees, the queen’s daughters, are infertile. They make up the majority of the beehive, tending to the beehive, building new wax honeycomb cells, and foraging for pollen and nectar.
Honey bees feed on pollen and nectar. As they collect this from plants, they disperse pollen from plant to plant. This process fertilizes flowers, which then produce fruits and seeds. About 80 percent of all flowering plants and over 75 percent of staple crops that feed humankind rely on animal pollinators. Pollination is truly a partnership because neither the plant nor the pollinator can exist in isolation.
We’re told that pollinators are responsible for one out of every three bites of food we eat! Of all the animal pollinators, the most economically important in the world are managed honey bees. A U.N. report states that of the 100 crops that provide 90 percent of the world’s food, over 70 rely on cross-pollination. In the U.S. alone, the honey bee’s economic contribution is over $19 billion.
