Honey Bees Habitat

Honey bees represent only a subset of about 20,000 known bee species. Honey bees are distinguished by their ability to produce and store honey (liquefied sugar). Besides honey production, bees are also known for the secretion of wax to construct perennial, colonial nests (bee hives). As of today, there are 7 recognized species of honey bees, which are the members of the Apis genus and are a surviving group from the Apini tribe. A honey bee appears somewhat light brown in color and measure about 15 millimeters. These bees are social insects and myriads of bees live together in colonies. Just like the bee species, honey bees also dwell together in colonies made of wax. Their habitation is called a hive, which may be natural (like a hollow tree) or man made. Let's look at how the honey bees habitat has been expanding to include almost the whole globe after a brief look at some amazing honey bee facts.

These social insects comprise a single queen (who lays eggs), 20,000-75,000 female worker bees (who are non-breeding) and hundreds of male drones. Depending on the seasonal changes, the number of individuals in a colony vary. For example, during the active season, the number of individual bees may reach a figure of 80,000. However, during colder seasons, the number will drastically decrease. One of the most intriguing honey bee facts is that during cold weather, only the queen bee can seek shelter, whereas the worker bees gradually starve to death. If the entire colony dies, then the queen seeks another suitable habitat of honey bees and establishes a new nest. This phenomenon is unique to honey bees.

Information on Honey Bees Habitat

The original honey bees habitat varies across the globe. One school of thought is that honey bees originated from tropical climates and densely forested regions. They believe that honey bees originated from Central Africa and then spread to different regions such as Eastern India, Northern Europe, China and America. The second school of thought holds that honey bees are natives of Southeast Asia and Europe. However, the fact that honey bees can be domesticated for manufacture of honey, conduced their spread across the globe in different habitats. Read more on

• How do Bees Make Honey
• How is Honey Made

Honey bees thrive wonderfully in natural as well as domesticated environments. However, these bees prefer living in woodlands, meadows, orchards, gardens and other areas furnished with an abundance of flower bearing plants. In the natural environment, honey bees are observed to build nests inside tree cavities and edges of various objects so as to camouflage themselves from their predators. Read more on How to start beekeeping.

Honey bees are mostly visible during summer and late spring. This is because during that time the queen bee forsakes the old nest, with a train of worker bees and commences to build a new honey bees nest. Since the queen and the workers take approximately 24 hours to locate a new place for the nest, one can find them swarming together in the air during the summer time. Honey bees are mostly harmless, however, certain species are quite aggressive and attack, unprovoked.

Honey bees need to maintain a constant temperature of 90 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit inside the honey bees nest, irrespective of the surrounding environmental temperature. These bees consume honey, which enables them to use their metabolic heat, to furnish the colony inside the hive with warmth during the winter weeks. On the contrary, in the summer months, these bees use a liquid from the nectar stored, to act as an evaporating coolant. These processes enable the bees to maintain constant temperatures inside the hive, irrespective of seasonal changes.

Honey bees from the temperate regions such as the European ones need to maintain a specific temperature inside the nest in order to survive during the winters. In order to maintain the temperature, they store larger amounts of honey as compared to other species. The workers in these temperate regions construct large, spacious nests featuring well-insulated interiors. Moreover, the workers swarm in early spring, so as to collect adequate amount of honey for the winter. On the other hand, the honey bees dwelling in tropical habitats, for example, the African honey bees, do not encounter series of cold weather weeks. This is why they need not build large, well insulated honey bees hives or store large amount of honey. The maintenance of constant temperature inside the hive in tropical habitats is not as tedious as in the temperate type of honey bees habitat. The swarming of these bees relies on the abundance of food sources rather than on the seasonal changes.

Domestication of honey bees for honey and beeswax is responsible for the dispersion of these insects to different regions of the world. This domestication of honey bees is not a new phenomenon and has been carried out for millions of years. Beekeeping is something that has gained a lot of importance and is not only a full time vocation but has even developed as a popular hobby practiced by millions across the globe. So we can say that honey bees habitat is not a particular one but they can thrive in a reasonable range of habitats, both natural and man made, provided care is taken to foster their honey making capacity.