Black dwarf honey bee
The black dwarf honey bee is a tiny honey bee from the warm forests of Southeast Asia. It is the darkest of all honey bees, almost completely black. Instead of living inside a hollow tree, its family builds one honeycomb hanging in the open from a twig.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its nest is a single honeycomb, only about 7 to 9 centimetres across, hidden behind leaves in a small tree or bush.
The bees smear sticky plant resin around the branch that holds the nest. It works like a fence that keeps ants out.
The flat top of the nest is a dance floor. The bees do a waggle dance there to tell each other where to find flowers.
Any girl larva can grow up to be a queen if the workers feed her special royal jelly.
For a long time scientists thought it was the same bee as its close cousin, the red dwarf honey bee.
Most asked questions about Black dwarf honey bee
?Where does the black dwarf honey bee live?
In Southeast Asia, in quiet warm forests, mostly in low places below 1,000 metres.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Apis andreniformis
- Group
- Bees and bumblebees
- Family
- Apidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Apidae
- Lives on
- Asia
Where the facts come from
- Apis andreniformis (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Roderic Page. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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