1. Kelsey Hansen
Literature of the Environment
Dr. Barta-Smith
08 May 2012
Field Guide Entry: Western Honey Bee (Apis Mellifera)
General Description
Perhaps one of the best know insects in the world, the honey bee plays a vital role in
pollinating plants that flower. There are three classes of this bee, and they are the “workers,”
which are non-reproductive females; the “drones,” which are reproductive males; and the
“queen,” which is the reproductive female. Similar in appearance, these types of bees are
covered in small hairs, and their bodies consist of a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. The head
comprises of two large eyes and two antennae. The thorax includes three pairs of legs and two
wings. A couple noticeable traits of the honey bee are the pollen carried on the back legs in a
small ball and the hairy eyes.
Habitat
As long as there are suitable hive-building sites and there are flowers to retrieve
food from, the honey bees’ habitat can be found anywhere. Their food is pollen

2. and nectar from flowers. Most important in feeding larvae is pollen.
Range/Movement
The range of the Western honey bee is widespread. Originally, the Europeans
brought them over to America.
Behavior
In search of pollen, nectar, and water, worker honey bees will travel up to two
miles per day. Worker bees immediately go to work after emerging full-grown
from their brood cells, but during the first four days of their lives, older workers
will feed the new bees while it hardens and produces substances from several
glands. Based on the needs of the colony, activities done by worker bees are as
follows:
 Feeding larvae,
 Cleaning,
 Processing honey,
 Manipulating wax,
 Air conditioning hive by fanning wings, and
 Guard duty.
A common behavior of honey bees is the use of pheromones. Essential for their
survival, pheromones are used as communication among honey bees for defense,
orientation, food production, mating, alarm, integration of colony activities, and
kin and colony recognition.
Misconceptions of Honey Bees
A common misconception is the idea that, after stinging, a honey bee will die very
quickly. The stinger is barbed, and sometimes the barbs do not always catch, allowing the bee to
either fly away uninjured or to pull the stinger free. Other misconceptions are that all bees make
honey or all bees sting, or that wasps and bees are alike. None of them are true.

3. Interaction
In October of 2010, I had a curious interaction with a honey bee. I was wearing a red
hoodie, and because it was getting close to fall and it was getting cold out, the bee possibly
thought I was a flower. At the back of my neck, I felt a rustling that sounded like paper, so I
reached back and grabbed it. Suddenly, there was a stinging pain on the tip of my middle finger.
The stinger did not stay in my finger, and the bee flew away. Though I was stung, I was positive
the bee survived because it did not lose its stinger.
Physical Description
Measurements
The length of a honey bee is about ½ inch or 12 mm long. The drones and the
queen are larger.
Color
The color of a honey bee is typically yellow, and on the abdomen it has 4 or 5
black or brown bands.
Anatomy
The anatomy of the honey bee consists of eyes, antennae, wings, legs, head,
thorax, abdomen, and the stinger.
Known Variations
Honey bees often range in color, and the abdomen can have varying colors of
stripes, from black to orange, tan, or yellow.
Correspondence of Traits (Age, Season, Habitat)
Worker honey bees cool the hive with their wings and heat the hive with body heat.
Adults are typically present year-round, but during cold weather months, they survive on honey
reserves while they huddle together in their hives.
Causes of Life/Death
The honey bee lives by avoiding predators, such as spiders, and it lives by eating honey.
Because the workload of a worker honey bee takes its toll, each will live for
approximately a month before it wears out. Some deaths are caused by natural diseases, but
other deaths are caused by insecticides and pesticides used on our crops, which honey bees also

4. pollinate. Parasitic mites have a large impact on killing off bee populations of Apis mellifera,
because these honey bees do not have natural defenses to fight against them.
Experience
Honey bees are rather calming to watch. They move among the flowers, minding their
own business. Words cannot adequately describe experiences with honey bees, and in some
cases, reading is an impediment to understanding any experiences with them. This is because
every person experiences things in different ways, and thus, we see them in different lights. For
example, a person who gets stung by a bee at an early age may fear bees forever. Yet, there are
others who get stung at an early age, and they eventually come to realize that the bee was only
protecting itself and that bees are important for humans and many other organisms. Some of us
will never experience the fear of bees due to the allergy some people have to their venomous
stings. Nature itself is a book to us, and “reading” this book is like an experience for us. When
we “read” nature, we each experience it differently as we do so. Therefore, we all view nature
and experience it in diverse ways.
Synthesis/Evaluation
Bees are vital to human beings, as well as other organisms within the ecosystem. Bees
help pollinate our crops and fruit trees, which bear vital vegetables and fruits that many
organisms rely on for their survival. Bees also give off a spiritual vibe. Regardless of their
being insects, they are calm organisms that do not display cruel intentions toward other beings
among them, unless they are threatened or provoked.
Walt Whitman, in his short essay “Bumblebees,” shows his appreciation for bees by
describing their daily activities and the way they act. They convey to Whitman a “pronounced
sense of strength, beauty, vitality, and movement” as they zip to and fro in quick flashes (225).
He thinks of them in a musical kind of way, as they hum “their perpetual rich mellow boom,”
and he questions, “Is there not a hint in it for a musical composition, of which it should be the
background?” (225) The sounds and ways of the bees lift his spirits. As he sits under a tulip
tree, wild bees swarm among its flowers, “seeking the sweet juice of the blossoms” from top to
bottom. Whitman says that their steady, yet loud, humming “makes an undertone to the whole,

5. and to my mood and the hour” (226). Their simple hum, and the bees’ simple ways of life,
provide Whitman with comfort and joy.
As Annie Dillard displays in her passage, “Living Like Weasels,” she describes how
comforting it would be to exist as a wild animal. We may “learn something of the mindlessness,
something of the purity of living in the physical senses and living without bias or motive” (879).
Like the weasels, honey bees live out of necessity as well, and not just by choice like humans do.
“Like blood pulsed into my gut through a jugular vein,” events and time are merely unremarked,
poured, and ingested directly (879). Every day is the same for the worker honey bee, and it does
not have to think and plan out what needs to be done during a typical day. Yielding at every
second to “the perfect freedom of single necessity,” the honey bee lives as it is meant to live. As
we humans try to find a place in this world, the honey bee has already found its place, which is
among the flowers. Similar to the weasel, the bee is “open to time and death painlessly, noticing
everything, remember nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will” (879). The bee
only lives through its needs. It does not need choices. Everything about the bee is preplanned by
Mother Nature, which allows the bee to choose “the given with a fierce and pointed will” (879).
In Margaret Atwood’s book, The Year of the Flood, the bees play a part in helping the
Gardeners. Their bees helped pollinate many of the flowering plants that grew vegetables, fruits,
and herbs in the Gardners’ gardens. A passage in Atwood’s book can also be compared to
Dillard’s essay, “Living Like Weasels.” The following is an example of Dillard saying that
“[t]he weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last
ignobly in its talons” (879).
God gave unto the Animals
A wisdom past our power to see:
Each knows innately how to live,
Which we must learn laboriously. (Atwood 236)
This next section of the poem relates to another part of Dillard’s essay, which says that
organisms, disregarding humans, notice everything, remember nothing, are “open to time and
death painlessly,” and they choose “the given with a fierce and pointed will” (879). It is an

6. example that God, or even Mother Nature, has given the guidance that plants and animals need to
survive.
The Creatures need no lesson books,
For God instructs their Minds and Souls:
The sunlight hums to every Bee,
The moist clay whispers to the Mole. (Atwood 236)
In some cases, humans feel pettily about bees. As David Rains Wallace says, “What we
feel about pettily, we begin to destroy” (935). Who needs an insect like this, which causes pain
to us on occasion? Often, humans kill bees not only because we know we have the power to do
so, but also out of fear. Humans should not fear the bee so much, but we do wonder what a bee
is thinking and what its intentions are while we are around it, or while it is around us. In
Atwood’s book, Pilar projects human feelings onto the bees by first introducing them by name to
Toby. “They need to know you’re a friend,” Pilar said (Atwood 99). We do not know how a bee
could be friends with a human. Wallace said that “we will continue to project our human
feelings onto other organisms, as we try to imagine their non-human experience” (936).

7. Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. The Year of the Flood. Anchor Books. 2009.
Dillard, Annie. “Living Like Weasels.” The Norton Book of Nature Writing. 2nd
Ed. Robert
Finch and John Elder. New York. W.W. Norton 2002. 876-879.
Iowa State University Entomology. “Species Apis Mellifera – Honey Bee.” BugGuide. 11
October 2011. Web. 08 May 2012. < http://bugguide.net/node/view/3080>.
Wallace, David Rains. “The Human Element.” The Norton Book of Nature Writing. 2nd
Ed.
Robert Finch and John Elder. New York. W.W. Norton 2002. 930-936.
Whitman, Walt. “Bumblebees” from Specimen Days and Collect. The Norton Book of Nature
Writing. 2nd
Ed. Robert Finch and John Elder. New York. W.W. Norton 2002. 224-226.
Wildscreen. “Honey Bee (Apis mellifera).” Arkive: Images of Life on Earth. 2011. Web. 08
May 2012. < http://www.arkive.org/honey-bee/apis-mellifera/#text=Habitat>.
“Western Honey Bee.” Wikipedia. 29 April 2012. Web. 08 May 2012.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_honey_bee#Life_expectancy>.