---
title: "Western Honeybee (Apis mellifera) | AnimalTracks.wiki"
description: "A forager who dances flower coordinates with her whole body, and dies giving her sting."
image: "https://animaltracks.wiki/images/animals/honeybee-1.webp"
published: "2026-08-30"
updated: "2026-09-28"
---
# Western Honeybee (*Apis mellifera*)
> **Status**: Checked against 5 sources, listed under Sources below.
> **Tagline**: A forager who dances flower coordinates with her whole body, and dies giving her sting.
> **Soundtrack Vibe**: Afrobeats & Modern Amapiano // Wizkid, "Essence (feat. Tems)"
> **Soundtrack Links**: [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/track/5FG7Tl93LdH117jEKYl3Cm) | [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m77FDcKg96Q)
> **Vibe Match**: A looping dance-floor groove for a forager who repeats one routine circuit after circuit: a straight run while shaking her abdomen, then a turn back to the start, her body's angle to gravity standing in for the direction to food.
## Biological Superpowers & Stats
- **Taxonomy**: *Apis mellifera*
- **Danger Level**: Low
- **Conservation Status**: Not Evaluated ([IUCN Red List](https://doi.org/10.2305/iucn.uk.2025-2.rlts.t42463639a277757621.en))
- **Superpower**: Waggle-dance directions read from the sun and gravity, a barbed sting that costs its owner her life, and a nest built from hexagonal wax cells.
- **Habitat**: Meadows, open woodland, gardens and farmland worldwide, nesting in tree hollows and other cavities
- **Diet**: Nectar and pollen from flowers, pollen being its only protein source
- **Tags**: insect, herbivore, venomous, social-colony, architect-builder
## Natural History & Behavior
## Three Sizes and a Barbed Sting
*Apis mellifera* comes in three sizes packed into one colony. Sterile female workers run 10 to 15 millimeters long, queens stretch to 18 to 20 millimeters, and males, called drones, land in between at 15 to 17 millimeters. In one laboratory feeding trial, caged worker bees weighed between 0.0776 and 0.1886 grams.
A worker's sting is heavily barbed. When she uses it, the sting and its venom glands tear out of her abdomen and stay embedded in the target, and that kills her. A stinging worker also releases an alarm pheromone that makes other workers agitated and more likely to sting.
## Dancing in a Dark Hive
A forager who finds food within about 300 meters of the hive does a simple "round dance" that says food is nearby but not in which direction. For food farther away she switches to the waggle dance: a straight run while shaking her abdomen, then a turn back to the starting point, circuit after circuit. On the vertical comb inside the dark hive she orients her body relative to gravity, and that angle stands in for the direction to the food relative to the sun's position. Researchers who trained honeybees to feeders up to 1.7 kilometers away found that the straight run's duration does not grow evenly with distance: it climbs faster over the first kilometer and more slowly beyond it.
## Queens Outlive Their Workers
> **A queen has been reported living up to eight years,** while her worker daughters typically live for only a few weeks.
A colony has one reproductive female, the queen, and she usually lives two to three years. Her sterile daughters, the workers, do all the colony's work, and foraging keeps their lives short: two to four weeks in summer, though a worker that lives through the winter can last as long as 11 months. One caged feeding trial recorded worker lifespans anywhere from 3 to 61 days, averaging under three weeks.
## Nectar, Pollen and a Worldwide Range
*Apis mellifera* feeds on nectar and pollen collected from blooming flowers, and pollen is its only source of protein. Workers build comb from wax they secrete, a sheet of hexagonal cells that also stores honey, which is processed nectar, and pollen. The species is native to Europe, western Asia and Africa. Human introduction to other continents began in the 17th century, and it now lives all around the world, including east Asia, Australia and the Americas. It favours places rich in flowering plants, such as meadows, open woodland and gardens, and nests in cavities such as hollow trees. The Red List's most recent assessment, from 2025, covers Europe only and lists the western honeybee there as Data Deficient, with a decreasing population trend.
## Frequently Asked Questions
### Is a queen honeybee's sting the same as a worker's?
No. Unlike a worker's, a queen's sting is not heavily barbed, so it does not rip out of her body when she uses it. Queens use it on each other: once a swarm has left, the new queens still in the old hive try to sting and kill one another, fighting on until a single queen survives. *(Source: [Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan]())*
### How far away can a honeybee actually direct her hivemates with the waggle dance?
Well over a kilometer. One study trained honeybees to sugar feeders between 0.1 and 1.7 kilometers from the hive and timed the dances they performed on returning. It also lists an older study of the dance, by Lindauer, that trained bees up to 11 kilometers from the hive. *(Source: [Kohl & Rutschmann 2021]())*
### What happens to a male honeybee after he mates with a queen?
He does not get long to celebrate. A drone that successfully mates with a queen in flight drops away from her afterward and dies within a few hours or days. Drones who do not mate simply keep loitering near the mating grounds, trying again until they succeed or die trying. *(Source: [Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan]())*
## Sources
1. [Apis mellifera (honey bee). Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan.]()
2. [Brown et al. (2022). Dream Team for Honey Bee Health: Pollen and Unmanipulated Gut Microbiota Promote Worker Longevity and Body Weight. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems.]()
3. [AnAge entry for Apis mellifera. AnAge: The Animal Ageing and Longevity Database, Human Ageing Genomic Resources.]()
4. [Kohl & Rutschmann (2021). Honey bees communicate distance via non-linear waggle duration functions. PeerJ.]()
5. [Moro et al. (2025). Apis mellifera. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2025: e.T42463639A277757621.]()
*Published August 30, 2026. Last updated September 28, 2026.*
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