Do you know what a bee is? Bees are a type of insect. There are many types of bees in the world.
Most bees in the world can make honey. Bees use honey to feed themselves and the young bees. Most bees in the world also make beeswax. Beeswax is a type of wax. Bees use the beeswax to make their homes.
Most bees live in hives. Hives are made from honeycomb, and they store eggs and food. The honeycomb is in the shape of lots of hexagons together. A colony, a group of bees that work together, lives in one hive.
In a bee colony, each bee has a job. One bee is the queen. She is usually the mother of all the other bees in the hive. The workers look after the queen. When she is too old, they kill her and find a new queen. It sounds bad, but it is for the health of the colony.
The male bees are the drones. The drones mate with the queen bee.
The female bees are worker bees. They must make honey. To make 1 tablespoon of honey, a worker bee must visit 4,000 flowers. They are attracted to the nectar of the flower. They suck it up and take it back to the hive to make the honey.
In the summer, many worker bees only live for about six weeks. That is because they work so hard that they never sleep. They work for the survival of the hive.
Worker bees have a stinger. They might sting you if they are scared. But bees do not usually sting. When a bee stings, it will usually die. When a bee stings, the stinger comes off. The bee cannot live without its stinger.
Bees may be small, but we need them. Bees help us because they pollinate.
Bees pollinate when they move pollen from one plant to another. If bees did not pollinate, new plants would not grow. Pollination helps make new seeds. Pollination helps make new plants grow. Without bees, our farms, gardens, and forests cannot survive.
Did you know that bees are disappearing? We lose bees because of climate change, habitat loss, and viruses. We must help bees however we can.