Do Bees Have Babies?

Do Bees
Have Babies?

By Kate Wilkinson-Brindle
Illustrated by Jason Henderson

Types of Bees

Bees are flying insects with six legs and two
pairs of wings. Did you know that there are
around 20,000 different types of bees in the
world? One of the tiniest is the Quasihesma
bee, which is only 1.8 mm long.
The largest bee is called the Megachile pluto bee.
It is almost 4 cm long, and it has a wingspan of
around 6 cm!
Some bees are nocturnal. They come out after
dark to visit flowers that only make nectar
at night and to avoid predators. There are
bees called digger bees, burrowing bees, leafcutter
bees and of course, honey bees.

Bee Diagram abdomen

head thorax

antennae

eyes

stinger

honey stomach

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Honey Bees

Honey bees make jam and
marmalade . . . just kidding!
They make honey!

Honey bees live together in a honey bee
a hive or colony of between
10,000 to 80,000 bees. In the
hive, there will be three types
of bees:

honey bee by sharpphotography.co.uk

• One queen bee lives in the hive. Her task is to lay the eggs.

• The female worker bees build and protect the hive, which is why
they can sting. They fly around collecting pollen and nectar from
flowers. They use the nectar to make honey.

• The male bees are called drones. Drones have no stingers. Their
only job is to mate with the queen bee.

Pollen and Nectar

Flowers make a sugary liquid called nectar to attract honey bees
and other animals. As honey bees fly from flower to flower to
drink the nectar, pollen grains from the flowers stick to them, and
so the bees carry the pollen from one plant to another. This is
called pollination.

But honey bees don’t just transfer
pollen between flowers – they also
bring pollen back to the hive for
food. The hairy back legs of a
honey bee are perfect for trapping
pollen grains.
Can you see the pollen on the bee’s
back legs?

honey bee by sharpphotography.co.uk

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Honey Bee Life Cycle

After mating, the queen honey bee lays eggs inside little wax cells
in the beehive. She can lay up to 3,000 eggs a day! After three
days, each egg develops into a larva. Worker bees feed the larva
on ‘bee bread’, which is a mixture of honey and pollen. After
aboutsix days, the worker bees seal the cell with wax. Inside the
cell the larva changes into a pupa with wings, legs, a head, thorax
and abdomen. Between 16 and 24 days after the egg is laid, the
adult bee chews its way through the wax cap and crawls out.
So, do bees have babies? Well, they have eggs, larvae and pupae.

queen lays egg worker feeds larva
and seals cells

egg larva pupa adult

The Importance of Bees

Bees provide humans with honey and

wax, and they also help pollinate crops

for our food, but bees are vital to our

environment in other ways too:

• When plants are pollinated by bees

and other insects, they produce the PPlalannttininggbbeeee-f-rfrieiennddlylyflfloowweerrsslilkikee
fruit, nuts and seeds that many wild ppooppppieiessccaannhheelplpbbeeeessssuurrvvivivee..
animals survive on.

• Plants provide habitats for animals. Bees pollinate many types

of trees, which are home to thousands of different insects, birds

and mammals.

• Bees are an important part of many food chains. Birds

and spiders eat bees as part of their diet.

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