You stroll past your hive for a quick peek and are dismayed to find five dead bees on the landing board. What does that mean? Is your hive in trouble? What should you do?
I can’t stress this enough: five dead bees is nothing. Nothing. The only difference between those five and a thousand of their sisters, is they happened to fall on the landing board. You aren’t worried about the other thousand because they fell somewhere else, a place where you can’t see them or count them.
I’ve read many estimates for the number of bees that die daily during foraging season, but depending on the size of the colony and local conditions, the real number is probably between 800 to 1200. For the sake of argument, I’m going to say 1000, which I think is a reasonable number.
The average lifespan of a worker bee
The first thing to consider is the average lifespan of an adult worker bee. For a healthy worker when all is going well, that lifespan is somewhere around 4 to 6 weeks. The period begins when the bee emerges from her brood cell and ends when she dies of old age or misadventure.
Old age is self explanatory and is often expressed by worn wings and hairless bodies. Misadventure can be due to anything, such as tangling with a spider web, getting blown away by the wind or smashed by a car, or getting diced by a lawn mower. As we humans say, stuff happens.
It turns out that four to six weeks is the number commonly cited for the average adult lifespan of most bees. That includes your mason bees, leafcutters, sweat bees, and miners. Basically, that’s how long bees working in the field live. The native bees emerge from their nests in spring and spend the next four to six weeks building a nest and laying eggs. They continue building until they die, and their offspring remain in the nest until the following year.
So in regard to an individual’s lifespan, honey bees are not unique. What is unique about honey bees is their ability to raise “winter bees” also know as diutinus or long-lasting bees. These bees are the ones that live inside the nest, survive the winter, and kickstart the colony the following spring. But that is another subject.
The egg-laying machine
The second thing to consider in a normal colony is the egg-laying ability of the queen. This number also varies, and I’ve read estimates that range from 1000 to 3000 eggs per day. To raise this many eggs, the colony needs a large force of healthy workers. Even so, we’re talking about a lot of eggs. Let’s take an average estimate of 2000 eggs per day during peak season.
Now, not all the eggs will grow into viable adults. Some will die at each stage of development. Let’s be conservative and say 80% reach adulthood. That’s .8 x 2000 or 1600 newly-hatched bees per day. If 1000 adults die during that one-day period, you still have a net gain of 600 bees. At the end of a month you have 600 x 30 or 18,000 more bees than you started with, even with losing 1000 per day. If 90% reach adulthood, you get 24,000 extra bees by the end of a month, which equals a good size swarm.
Yes, these are estimates based on averages, but they paint a picture. If you didn’t have all those bees dying each and every day, things would soon be out of control. If you took 90% of 2000 x 30 without deleting the dead ones, you’d have 54,000 additional bees at the end of a month—another whole colony. At the end of six months, you would have seven full-sized colonies. But it doesn’t work that way.
My point in reviewing the numbers is to illustrate that the daily loss of bees is much greater that we realize. The fact that we don’t see the dead, coupled with enormous amounts of brood rearing, lulls us into thinking that bees don’t die. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
Rusty
Honey Bee Suite
Like most adult bees, a healthy honey bee worker lives about four to six weeks in the spring and summer months. © Rusty Burlew.
FAQs
Healthy hives may experience daily die-off of up to approximately 100 dead bees per day per hive. Higher numbers may be a sign of bee poisoning or exposure to another stress (e.g., poor hive conditions, inadequate food supply, parasites, disease, etc.).
What does it mean when there are a lot of dead bees on the ground? ›
Additionally, all bees chuck out debris and dead bees from their nest to maintain hygiene, so a cluster of dead bumble bees could mean that there is a nest nearby, even though you may not see it.
How many times do bees need to visit a flower to make one pound of honey? ›
About the Work of the Honeybee
A honeybee visits between 50 and 100 flowers during one collection flight from the hive. In order to produce 1 pound of honey, 2 million flowers must be visited. A hive of bees must fly 55,000 miles to produce a pound of honey.
How many bees die a day from pesticides? ›
< 100 bees per day – normal die off rate. 200–400 bees per day – low kill. 500–900 bees per day – moderate kill.
What happens if 100 bees sting you? ›
If you get stung more than a dozen times, the accumulation of venom may induce a toxic reaction and make you feel quite sick. Signs and symptoms include: Nausea, vomiting or diarrhea. Headache.
How long would we live if all bees died? ›
In Europe alone, 84% of the 264 crop species and 4,000 plant varieties exist thanks to pollination by bees. Some attribute the following quote to Albert Einstein: "If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.
Why am I finding so many dead bees? ›
You might be seeing bees that have died of old age. You might also be seeing bees that died in the hive and have been cleaned out by the live bees. The dead Honey bee might just be cold or starved having been out foraging in the poor weather we have had this week and not made it back to the hive.
Why do dead bees still sting? ›
Because parts of its insides are attached to the stinger, a bee dies shortly afterwards. If something happens to the bee and it doesn't use its stinger and it dies, it still has its stinger inside. The stinger is still able to be used even after death. So if you step on a dead bee it can definitely still sting you.
Do dead bees smell bad? ›
Once the bees are dead, the honey will begin to decay (as well as the bees) and smell like road kill. A home renovation specialist should be consulted to remove that portion of the wall or ceiling and remove the decaying bees.
What color can bees not see? ›
Bees, like many insects, see from approximately 300 to 650 nm. That means they can't see the color red, but they can see in the ultraviolet spectrum (which humans cannot).
Bees rest and sleep at night. Which might seem obvious, but it wasn't studied scientifically until the 1980s when a researcher called Walter Kaiser observed their sleep-wake cycles and found that honeybees sleep an average of five to seven hours a night.
How long do honey bees live? ›
A: Honey bees, depending on their role within the hive, will have different lifespans. A queen bee can live up to 3-4 years, while a worker bee will live up to six weeks during the summer. A drone will die shortly after mating, but can live for several months if it has not done so.
What is the number one killer of bees? ›
Current scientific research indicates that parasites, and the diseases they carry, are the main threat to the lives of honey bees.
What is toxic to bees? ›
Bees can be severely and even fatally affected by pesticides, fertilizers, copper sulfate (more lethal than spinosad), and other chemicals that man has introduced into the environment. They can appear inebriated and dizzy, and even die.
What kills bees fast? ›
‟Mix one part dish soap to four parts water in [a] spray bottle. Spray all bees … with this solution. The soap-water solution will kill the bees but doesn't leave a harmful residue like an insecticide. Spray every bee until no bees return for at least one day.”
How many deaths from bees per year? ›
In the most severe cases, an allergic reaction to a bee sting can cause anaphylactic shock, requiring treatment with a shot of epinephrine. About 100 Americans die every year from bee stings.
What percentage of bees are dying? ›
Typically, a bee hive or colony will decline by 5-10 percent over the winter, and replace those lost bees in the spring. In a bad year, a bee colony might lose 15-20 percent of its bees. In the U.S., winter losses have commonly reached 30-50 percent, in some cases more.
Are bees going extinct? ›
Although we have seen colony losses, honey bees are not at risk of extinction. In fact, it is estimated that there are more honey bees on the planet now than at any time in human history. In contrast, there are more than 3,600 bee species native to North America, some of which are facing a real risk of extinction.
