Whether bees reuse their hives depends entirely on the species’ social structure and life cycle. The term “hive” is often used broadly, but scientifically it refers to a nest structure ranging from a complex communal home to a tiny, solitary burrow. Bees fall into two major categories—social and solitary—and their nesting habits reflect vastly different strategies for survival. A bee’s commitment to its home is determined by whether its colony lives for multiple years or only a single season.
Perpetual Occupancy: The Honey Bee Model
Honey bee colonies, primarily Apis mellifera, are built for long-term residency and are the classic example of perpetual hive occupancy. Unlike most other bee species, honey bee colonies are perennial, meaning the entire colony—including the queen, workers, and drones—survives the cold winter months. They achieve this by forming a tight winter cluster within the hive and feeding on large stores of honey. The existing hive structure is maintained and expanded year after year.
The reuse of the hive is central to the colony’s reproductive process, which occurs through swarming, typically in the spring. Swarming is not an abandonment of the home, but a controlled division of the colony. The old queen departs with roughly half of the worker bees to establish a completely new home elsewhere, often in a hollow tree or a cavity.
The original hive is immediately reused by the remaining colony. This residual population includes thousands of workers and developing brood, who raise a new queen from special queen cells. The new queen takes over the established, resource-rich hive, ensuring continuous occupation. The wax comb itself is also continually reused for storing honey, pollen, and rearing new generations of brood.
Seasonal Abandonment: Bumble Bees and Other Annual Colonies
Many social bees, such as bumble bees (Bombus species), follow an annual life cycle that requires the complete abandonment of their nests. A new colony is founded in the spring by a single queen who survived the winter in hibernation. Over the summer, she raises a colony of workers, which can grow to contain 50 to 400 individuals.
The primary goal of the annual colony is to produce new reproductive individuals—males and new queens—before the end of the season. As fall approaches, the original queen, workers, and males all perish, marking the end of the colony. Only the newly mated queens survive, seeking a sheltered spot, such as loose soil or a rodent burrow, to hibernate until spring.
Because the colony dies off, the physical nest built during the summer is left empty and is not reused by emerging queens the following year. A newly awakened queen seeks a fresh nesting site to begin her colony from scratch. This strategy also serves as a biological hygiene measure, as starting clean avoids the high concentration of parasites and pathogens that accumulate in an established nest.
Single-Use Structures: Solitary Bees
The vast majority of bee species are solitary, and their nesting habits represent a third model: the single-use structure. Solitary bees, including mason bees and leafcutter bees, do not form colonies, produce workers, or live in a communal hive. The female works alone, acting as both the architect and caregiver for her offspring.
A solitary female constructs a nest as a series of compartmentalized brood cells, often in pre-existing cavities like hollow stems, abandoned beetle tunnels, or ground burrows. Once a cell is constructed, the female provisions it with a mixture of nectar and pollen, often called “bee bread.” She then lays a single egg, seals the cell with materials like mud or leaf fragments, and repeats the process until the tunnel is full.
Once a cell is sealed, it is permanently abandoned by the mother bee, who only lives for a few weeks as an adult. The entire structure is a temporary nursery designed to sustain a single generation. The offspring develop inside these sealed cells over several months, emerging as adults the following season to build their own single-use nests.