Bee Facts for Kids

A Picture of Bees
  • Kingdom: Animalia
  • Phylum: Arthropoda
  • Class: Insecta
  • Order: Hymenoptera
  • Suborder: Apocrita
  • Superfamily: Apoidea
  • Clade: Anthophila

19 Bee Facts for Kids

  1. Bees are eusocial flying insects and members of the Apocrita suborder.
  2. Bees are known for their role in pollination and production of honey and beeswax.
  3. There are over 16,000 species of bees worldwide.
  4. Bees can be found on every continent, except Antarctica.
  5. Not all bees are social, there are many species that are solitary and do not live we other bees in a bee nest.
  6. Bees are omnivores, because of the microbes living in the pollen and nectar that they eat.
  7. Bees can be as small as 0.08 inch and as large as 1.54 inches.
  8. The largest living bee is the Wallace’s Giant Bee (Megachile pluto).
  9. The average flight speed of a bee is 15 miles per hour.
  10. Bees can flap its wings around 230 times a second, which produces the famous buzzing noise you hear.
  11. Many bee species have a stinger that can be used in defense. Some of these stingers have barbs and when that bee stings something, it’s ripped out of their abdomen and they die.
  12. Not all bees can sting, about 500 species of bees are stingless.
  13. A bee nest is a natural nest or cavity created by the bees, where a beehive is a man-made enclosure for bees.
  14. The western honey bee is domesticated and used in the production of honey and crop pollination.
  15. The carpenter bee is considered a pest because they can cause minor damage to structures made from wood.
  16. The bumble bee doesn’t have barbs on its stinger, so it can sting multiple times.
  17. Colony collapse disorder, or simply CCD is an event where the worker bees of a colony abandon their nest or hive.
  18. Melittology, sometimes called Apicology, is the scientific study of bees.
  19. A person who produces commodities from bees is called a beekeeper or an apiarist.

Additional Resources on Bees

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