Bees form a clade of hymenopteran insects from the Apoid superfamily. At least 20,000 species of bees are listed on the planet, including around 2,000 in Europe and nearly 1,000 in France. They can’t see in the dark.

 The differents roles of bees :

• Queen bees : It’s a fertile female and the mother of the whole colony. She can live several years.

• Worker bees : They are the fertile females who takes care of the maintenance, the feeding of the nest and the care of the brood : they can live a few weeks to a few months.

• Male drone : They ensure the fertilization of future queens : they die after mating.

Warning : There are bees that can run after you for 1 kilometer just to sting you.

Food : 

- larvae → pollen

- adult → nectar

- queen → royal jelly

Construction of a honeycombs :

90% wax and 10% pollen and propolis by worker bees to store honey, pollen or brood in their hive.

There is another type of bee: The lonely bee , They live in the ground and nest in the ground to live there. They are innocuous and very important for pollinating. They live among three and six weeks.

Honey bees produce commodities such as honey, beeswax, pollen while some beekeepers also raise queens and other bees to sell to other farmers and to satisfy scientific curiosity. 
Beekeepers also use honeybees to provide pollination services to fruit and vegetable growers. Many people keep bees as a hobby. Some people do that along with another job. 
These factors affect the number of colonies maintained by the beekeeper. Most beekeepers are hobby beekeepers. 
A sideline beekeeper attempts to make a profit keeping bees but relies on another source of income. 
Worldwide, commercial beekeepers number about 5% of the individuals with bees but produce about 60% of the world's honey crop. 
Queen breeders are specialist beekeepers who raise queen bees for other beekeepers. 

It is important to know that bee stings can be fatal if you are not careful. The use of protective clothing is now routine to work with bees.
It is necessary to wear a beekeeper combination at the right size because the smallest interstice is enough for bee to infiltrate. 
The clothes must cover all the parts of the body, the upper and lower limbs. It must be tight at the ankles and sleeves to prevent the passage of bees. 

A beekeeper earns an average of 2031€ gross per month in France and an average the annual salary in the world is of 25000€. 


The first relationships between humans and bees were around 6000 years ago. The first allusion to hives was in
the 14th century but the beekeeping like we know today appeared in the 18th
century. 

The amateurs can also be stars like the famous actor Morgan Freeman , the famous actress Scarlett Johansson
and the Greek philosopher Aristotle.

The bee's queen is the only one which is able to create life within a hive. It's a very specific process that we chose to explain because it's a part of the bee's life ( and a quite important one).

1-Reproduction:

First of all, when a queen bee is born, it rests during 5 days before it gets soared in the sky to accomplish its mating flight. The queen mates with several males (between 12 and 15) until its spermatheque is filled.

A spermatheque is an organ of the queen's body which stores the sperms (about 6 millions).

The males which will have fertilized the queen will die a few days after the mating flight.

Once it is housed, the queen lays permanently from february to september to breed several colonies for the rest of its life (about five years).

To finish the queen lays 400 000 eggs in a year. What an impressive number!

2-The egg:

The bee egg is a white stick 1,5mm long and 0,3mm in diameter. It is stuck to the bottom of the cell where the queen placed it. At the beginning it is straight but on the third day it lies at the bottom of the cell.

The young larva isn't visible, lying in a royal jelly drop. It grows up really fast and during its growth it undergoes five skin changes at different times after the egg hatch. The last moult accurs when the larva lies down in its alveoli.

At the end of its growth the larva changes position. It moults a last time and weaves a silk cocoon. The workers bees cover the cell with a porous plate: the lid.

Twelve days after the sealing, about three weeks after laying the gang worker leaves her cell.

3- Life of a worker:

The birth cycle contains 21 days, for 3 days it's an egg, 4 to 9 days it's a larva then after 10 to 21 days it becomes  a nymph.

The budding bee is small, hairy, whitish, slow, clumsy and harmless. It stays a few days in the hive. From its birth to the first foraging 1à to 18 days will pass. Between its birth and the 18 days, it performs different tasks: to rest, interior work, to nurse, to be a guardian.

A winter worker lives about 5 months, a summer worker lives about 5 weeks.

1- They can fly higher than the Everest.

2- Directly or indirectly they save us from famine.

3- A bee produces 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in her life.

4- A bee visits 50 to 100 flowers in a collect travel and a hive produces 200kg of honey in a year.

5- Bees are an officially endangered species.

6- Bees understand the concept of zero

Conclusion: bees are very mysterious and smart

1. Bees are the only insects in the world which produce food consumed by humans.

2. In a hive there are around :

- 20 000 to 30 000 bees in winter.

- 60 000 to 65 000 bees in summer.

3. A bee beats its wings 200 times in one second. That's why we can hear a noise like "buzzzzz".

4. A bee can detect the magnetic field of flowers.

5. A bee can carry the half of her weight in pollen.

6. When a bee collects the pollen, she eats it with her legs.