Guess Who: Learn How to Tell the Buzzy Bugs Apart!

How can one identify the different insects that are frequently confused with bees? Bees are any member of the order Hymenoptera that are within the clade Anthophila. There are over 16,000 species of bee. And not all bees make honey - in fact most do not! 

Only one genus of bee, Apis, are the true honey bees, that live in hives, make the sweet treat, and are kept in boxes and baskets by beekeepers. There is one other bee genus that is quite different from the well-known honey bee, that also makes honey, but the process and management of these bees would be foreign to anyone imagining a classic honey bee hive. So, let’s get to know some common bees, bee mimics, and other pollinators, as well as the nests they make.

Insects commonly mistaken for bees are wasps and flies. Wasps are closely related to bees, but can be recognized by a few key differences, including their lack of hair, and their very thin “wasp-like” waist. Bees, by contrast, are usually quite fuzzy, and may have round little butts.  Bees and wasps have very similar triangular shaped faces with large eyes on either side of their head. Both also have 4 distinct wings in 2 pairs. 

Flies are not as closely related and the differences are much more pronounced. However, several species of flies are “deliberate” bee and wasp mimics, and try their darndest to appear to predators like a dangerous stinging bee. Some flies may bite, but none can sting. Flies only have 2 wings, and their eyes are very big, and extend onto the top of their head. The way they fly is usually a lot more irregular, and it may make it hard to get a good look at one. 

Wasp pictured here with a hairless body and thin waist. It is hard to see in this photo, but wasps have 4 wings.

This is a fly that is mimicking a bee. It is fuzzy and yellow, but it only has 2 wings, a long tongue that is extended and its eyes are large. It also does not have the waist and triangle shaped head characteristic of a wasp or bee.

Wasps and bees have a similar face shape. Both have triangle-shaped faces with chewing mandibles and large oblong eyes on the side of their head. The wasp (picture left) is less hairy than the bee.

Bees and wasps are in the same order, and are more closely related to each other than they are to flies. This is why there is a strong resemblance.

Honey Bees

The most well-known and beloved bee, live in hives of tens of thousands of individual workers (all of which are female) and a single reproductive queen. There are actually lots of species of honey bee, ranging in size from the Giant Honey bee (Apis dorsata) at 3 cm (!), to the tiny Dwarf Honey Bee (Apis florea,) coming in at just 7mm in length. Only Apis mellifera and Apis cerana have been domesticated by humans. All of the honey bees in the genus Apis make honey. Some are cavity nesters, meaning they live in holes in trees, inside the walls of buildings, bee hive boxes, or skep baskets - really anywhere they are safe and cozy, that can fit their population. Other species of honey bees, such as the Giant honey bee, are open-air nesters. They build comb in sheets on the sides of cliffs, buildings, or in trees. All honey bees create hexagonal honeycomb made of wax they secrete from glands in their abdomens.

The other type of bees that make honey are those in the genus Melipona. In many ways, these bees are similar to honey bees in the genus Apis. They are eusocial, and live in hives, but they are not as easily managed because they are specialist pollinators and they make honey in pots and vertical stacks, which is simply not as easy to harvest from. One species of Melipona is the only known pollinator of vanilla!

Probably due to the antics of Winnie the Pooh, people have come to mistake wasps nests with beehives. The classic image of the round mass with a hole in it, hanging from a tree, is in fact not something in the wheelhouse of any bee, honey producer or not. Rather, wasps, in particular paper wasps, chew up wood pulp and create complex paper mache (literally!) structures that can hang on tree branches, from flood lights, and houses. 

Historically, honey bees were kept in many types of hives, including the woven basket, and a similar clay construction. This is the closest similarity to the round wasp nest hanging from a tree that we are familiar with. It is called a skep, and it is not used much anymore, other than for aesthetic purposes. Much more commonly used among hobbyist and commercial beekeepers are the standardized and interchangeable Langstroth hives, which make moving hives and harvesting honey much easier. If you are interested, you can watch this short documentary about Irish artisan skep makers. There are no subtitles, and their accent can be quite difficult to understand (even though they are speaking English!), but you can still see the process they use. 

A paper wasps nest in a tree.

Regular Langstroth hive that is used in commercial beekeeping and by most backyard beekeepers. There are other types of hives for keeping Apis mellifera, the European honey bee, but this is by far the most common. It is made of equally sized, evenly spaced wooden frames that are removable and interchangeable.

This is an open air nest of the Apis dorsata.

Here is the size difference between several honey bee species.

Within a single honey bee hive there are 3 types of bees. The large queen bee is the only reproductive female in the hive. She lays up to 2,000 eggs in a single day! It is rare that you would see the queen bee flying around outside the hive, but in the spring, young virgins will leave the nest to mate. After she has mated, she will become too large to fly unless the entire colony swarms. Another caste of honey bee is the male drone. He is large, does not have a stinger, and has huge round eyes that take up almost his entire head. He uses these to seek out virgin queens in flight. These may be abundant around spring time. Finally, the most common honey bee type is the worker. They are all female, have stingers, and are likely the bees you will see out foraging on flowers. They really won’t bother you unless you are disturbing the hive or provoking them.  

Honey bees are not native to the Americas and were brought over by settlers. However, there are thousands of native bee species in the Americas and around the world. They are incredibly diverse in their behaviors, sizes and colors, foods, and habitats. Some are solitary, some aggregate together but live separate lives. Others are semi or sub-social, like carpenter bees. Some are generalists that will pollinate anything, others are specialists, such as the blueberry bee, that only eats one thing. Some native bees are cavity nesters, some are open-air nesters, others are  burrowers, or borrowers. These native bees are often better pollinators of certain crops than the typical honey bee, but they are not easy to manage at an industrial scale and thus their health is not properly considered, to the detriment of our agricultural and natural ecosystems. A diversity of pollinators creates more resilient ecosystems.

Telling the difference between a honey bee worker and other types of bees may be difficult at times, and it takes practice to notice the subtle differences in body size, coloration and fuzziness. But using these guidelines, you can be sure to know the difference between the most commonly mistaken groups: bees, flies, and wasps.  

To learn more about the problems with industrial agriculture consider taking EcoGather’s Food Systems Thinking course. To learn more about how you can protect our natural pollinators, take Ecological Pest Management and Beneficial Insects. If you feel you want to learn more about how different species are interacting (pests, pollinators, and plants) in the world around you, consider Ecology Essentials for Everyone. If you are intrigued by beekeeping, keep an eye out for The Art and Science of Apiculture, coming soon!