What Are Our Favourite Bees?

We all have a favourite colour, restaurant, or shoes. But here at Beevive, we all have our favourite types of bees too!

Let's check out the teams' responses:

Faye

Red Mason Bee

Why is it your favourite?

I love watching Red Mason Bees make their nests. They find cracks in walls and prefer hollow plant stems like you would find a bee hotel. Once they have laid their eggs, they cleverly cap off the stems with mud to separate each cell. To pack mud into these portions, females use a pair of 'horns' on their faces.

A Fun Fact:

Red mason bee males have pale 'moustaches' on their faces!

Jake

Honey Bee

Why is it your favourite?

Honey bees do a 'waggle dance' to communicate with their fellow bees. The dance tells other bees where the best sources of food, water and shelter are.

A Fun Fact:

Honey bees are the only insect that creates food eaten by humans.

Megan

White-tailed Bumblebee

Why is it your favourite?

They remind me of summer days at primary school when I would spend my lunch break looking for helpless bumblebees on the school field. I would gather mown grass, twigs and flowers to build 'homes' for them in an attempt to bring them back to good health. When they disappeared the next day, I always hoped that they had regained their energy to buzz away!

A Fun Fact:

Bumblebees can flap their wings up to 200 times a second - that's a similar RPM to some motorcycle engines!

Jasmine

Ashy Mining Bee

Why is it your favourite?

Ashy mining bees seem like the misunderstood and monochromatic outsiders of the bee family. They may look spooky but are non-aggressive.

I like them as they have the most adorable white and grey fluff across their thorax and faces, which reminds me of my tabby's tummy and whiskers! They are also one of the bees I researched the most when I first started writing blogs for Beevive all those years ago!

A Fun Fact:

The females are especially beautiful as their glossy black abdomens look blue in the light.

Jenny

Leaf-cutter bee

Why is it your favourite?

I like leaf-cutter bees because it's fascinating how they seal up their nests with tiny chomped-away sections of leaves!

A Fun Fact:

Despite her love of watching bees from her bee hotel and teaching her boys about them, Jenny is actually allergic to bees! Thank goodness solitary bees are friendly and safe!

Calum

White-tailed Bumblebee

Why is it your favourite?

As a kid, I was fascinated by bugs, especially BIG bugs, and the white-tailed bumblebee is exactly that. Despite their size, they are gentle giants that go from flower to flower collecting pollen and nectar for their community.

Bumblebees were also the first bee species I saved using a Beevive Revival Kit, which I recorded. You can watch it here.

Another White-tailed Bumblebee Fact:

A bumblebee with a full stomach is only ever about 40 minutes from starvation.

This is why we must save all our bees. You can help by learning how to revive a bee yourself.

You can also find more about the different bee species and how to identify them within our bee identification guide.