Bee Facts for Kids

26 Bee Facts For Kids

1. Bee is the common name for a large group of eusocial flying insects in the Anthophila clade.
2. Everyone knows bees for their important role in pollination of plants.
3. Scientists have identified more than 16,000 different species of bees.
4. Bee species are found worldwide, apart from Antarctica and a few very remote islands.
5. Bees can live in any habitat that contains flowering plants that are pollinated by insects.
6. Scientists have found fossil evidence that shows bees appeared as far back as ~65 million years ago (Late Cretaceous).
7. Bees have a head, compound eyes, proboscis (mouth), thorax, wings, legs, abdomen, and a stinger (not all species).
8. Bees are classified as omnivores even though the eat honey, this is because microbes are consumed with their honey.
9. Bees are one of the most social groups of living animals on the planet. However, less than 10% of the known bee species are solitary.
10. An example of a social bee species is the honeybee (Apis mellifera).
11. An example of a solitary bee species is the patchwork leafcutter bee (Megachile centuncularis).
12. Bee species vary in size, they can be as short as 0.08 inches or reach a length of 2.5 inches.
13. The largest living bee species is the Wallace's giant bee (Megachile pluto) with a maximum length of 2.5 inches.
14. The smallest living bee species is the Perdita minima with a maximum length of only 0.07 inches.
15. Bees can fly fast by flapping their wings around 200 times a second and reach speeds of up to 15 to 20 miles per hour.
16. Social bee colonies live in a bee’s nest, where a beehive is a man-made structure for housing a bee colony.
17. A bee’s nest is where they bring pollen to convert into honey, to bee themselves and juvenile bees.
18. Bee’s create honeycombs within the nest, and this is where pollen is stored and converted into honey.
19. A bee colony will contain a queen, drones, and workers.
20. A queen bee is a reproductive female who produces eggs and grows the colony’s size.
21. A drone is a reproductive male who fertilizes new queens before they leave the bee nest.
22. A worker bee is a non-reproductive female who forges, builds, cares of young and defends.
23. Bees will defend their nest if disturbed by stinging the invader. Unlike wasps, a bee dies after using its stinger.
24. Not all bees have a stinger, there are about 550 described species of bees that are classified as stingless bees.
25. Apiculture is the act of beekeeping by humans as a hobby or for the commercial production of honey.
26. CCD is the acronym for Colony collapse disorder, where bees abandon a nest or hive for no known reason.

Bee Pictures

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the below images will be helpful for your research on bees. Below are three various pictures of bees. These pictures should help you better understand bees, the producers of the world’s honey.

A picture of a honey bee.

A picture of a bumble bee.

A picture of a carpenter bee.