How long honey bees (Apis mellifera) stay in one place depends entirely on whether the focus is on the collective location of the colony or the movement of an individual insect. A honey bee colony is a perennial unit, designed for long-term occupation of a single nesting site, provided conditions remain favorable. Conversely, the life of a single worker bee is a continuous cycle of movement, both within and outside the hive, with a lifespan measured in weeks during active seasons. Understanding the difference between the colony’s stability and the individual bee’s mobility is essential to grasp the answer.
The Hive: A Permanent Home
A healthy, established honey bee colony is built for stability and may occupy the same physical location for many years, sometimes even decades. The colony invests significant resources into constructing wax comb, which serves as the physical structure for raising brood and storing honey and pollen. This substantial investment makes relocation costly and generally rare. The colony’s survival strategy is based on defending and maintaining this fixed resource base.
The queen bee, the reproductive center of the colony, contributes to this stability, often living for three to five years. Her presence and pheromones anchor the colony to its location. While the physical location remains stable, the bee population inside the hive is constantly turning over.
The colony functions as a single superorganism, with the hive location representing its permanent address. This long-term residency is contingent upon a continuous supply of local resources and protection from severe environmental stressors or predators.
When and Why Colonies Move
The collective unit of the honey bee colony will only move its home under two main circumstances, which are distinct in their cause and purpose.
Swarming
Swarming is the colony’s natural reproductive process, typically occurring in the spring when the hive population grows too large. During a swarm, the old queen leaves the established nest with approximately half of the worker bees to find a new location. The remaining bees and a developing new queen are left behind.
The swarming bees first cluster temporarily near the original hive, often on a tree branch, while scout bees search for a suitable new cavity. Once a consensus is reached, the entire cluster flies to the chosen permanent home, which can be anywhere from a few hundred yards to over a mile away. This relocation creates two distinct colonies where there was previously only one.
Absconding
The second reason for a collective move is absconding, which is the complete abandonment of the hive by the entire colony due to severe stress. This is a survival mechanism triggered by factors like prolonged lack of food, extreme heat, or overwhelming pest infestation. An absconding colony leaves behind virtually all its resources and brood, seeking a better environment. Absconding colonies, particularly in tropical regions, can sometimes travel much greater distances than swarms, with some observed traveling up to 100 miles or more.
Individual Bee Mobility
From the perspective of an individual worker bee, the amount of time spent in “one place” is a matter of a few weeks before she begins to travel extensively. A worker bee’s life is divided into distinct phases, beginning entirely within the hive. For the first two to three weeks of her life, the bee performs in-hive duties:
- Cleaning cells.
- Feeding larvae as a nurse bee.
- Building comb.
- Guarding the entrance.
Once a worker bee transitions to a field bee, she becomes a forager, spending the last weeks of her life flying outside the hive. The lifespan of a summer worker bee is four to six weeks, with her wings wearing out from constant flight. A forager’s daily routine involves flying significant distances, covering a foraging range of up to two to three miles from the hive to collect nectar, pollen, water, and propolis.
In contrast, bees that emerge late in the season, known as winter bees, have a different physiology that allows them to live for several months. They remain largely inside the hive during the cold period, conserving energy and helping to keep the queen and the brood warm. The queen and drones also exhibit limited mobility; the queen leaves only for her mating flights, and drones only leave to mate or are expelled before winter.