Bees exhibit a wide range of social behaviors, from living completely alone to forming complex, highly organized colonies. The common image of a beehive with a queen, workers, and drones only represents one type of bee social structure. In fact, most bee species do not live in colonies with a queen, challenging the widespread assumption that all bees share this characteristic. Understanding the diverse lifestyles of bees reveals a spectrum of adaptations that allow these pollinators to thrive in various environments.
The Highly Social Queen
Many bees, such as honey bees and bumble bees, live in highly organized societies where a single queen bee plays a central role. The queen is the adult, mated female responsible for laying the colony’s eggs. Her primary function is reproduction, and a healthy queen can lay up to 1,500 eggs per day during peak seasons.
These social colonies operate with a distinct caste system, including the reproductive queen, non-reproductive female workers, and male drones. Worker bees perform various tasks, such as building and maintaining the hive, collecting nectar and pollen, feeding the brood, and defending the nest. The queen also influences colony behavior through chemical signals, known as pheromones, which help regulate the unity of the colony and suppress worker bee reproduction. Honey bee colonies can house tens of thousands of individuals, with a single queen and hundreds of drones alongside up to 80,000 worker bees during active seasons.
Bees That Live Alone
The majority of bee species are solitary. These bees do not have a queen, nor do they form colonies or produce honey. Each female solitary bee lives and reproduces independently by building and provisioning her nest.
Solitary bees exhibit diverse nesting habits, including ground-nesting in soil, sand, or clay, and cavity-nesting in hollow plant stems, existing tunnels in wood, or artificial bee houses. A female solitary bee collects pollen and nectar, forms a pollen ball, lays a single egg on it, and then seals the cell before repeating the process for other eggs. Examples include mason bees and leafcutter bees. After laying her eggs and provisioning the cells, the female often dies before her offspring emerge, with the larvae developing independently.
Variations in Bee Societies
Beyond the distinctions of highly social and solitary bees, intermediate social structures exist among different bee species. Some bees exhibit communal nesting, where multiple females share a common nest entrance but each female constructs and provisions her own individual brood cells within the nest. This arrangement allows for shared defense of the entrance without cooperative care of offspring.
Other species display what is known as primitive eusociality, a less rigid social organization compared to highly social bees like honey bees. Bumble bees, for instance, are considered primitively eusocial; their colonies are annual. In these cases, morphological differences between the queen and workers may be minimal or non-existent, and the social structure does not involve the same complex division of labor seen in advanced eusocial species. These variations highlight the evolutionary spectrum of sociality in bees, demonstrating that social organization is not a simple dichotomy but a continuum of behaviors.