Western honey bee

The western honey bee is a small, fuzzy insect with golden-and-brown stripes and four clear wings. It spends warm days flying from flower to flower, drinking a sweet juice called nectar and gathering dusty yellow pollen on its legs. Back home, the bees turn that nectar into honey to eat when flowers are scarce.

Honey bees live together in a big family called a colony. In summer a single hive can hold tens of thousands of bees, and they all share the work. Some clean, some care for the babies, some guard the door, and some fly out to find food. At the centre of it all is one queen, the mother of nearly every bee in the hive.

Bees are wonderful talkers, even though they never make a sound with a voice. When a bee finds a good patch of flowers, she comes home and does a little wiggling dance. The way she waggles tells the other bees which direction to fly and how far to go. Then off they buzz to bring back more food.

As bees move from bloom to bloom, they carry pollen with them. This helps flowers make seeds and fruit, so apples, strawberries, and many other plants can grow. Farmers and gardeners are very glad of the quiet, hard work that bees do.

Scientists do not yet know exactly how many western honey bees live wild in Europe. A 2014 European assessment called the species “data deficient” because managed hive counts do not reveal how wild colonies are doing. We can help pollinators by planting many kinds of flowers across the seasons and avoiding pesticides where possible.