--- title: Society in a Box description: A honeybee's life, death and world canonical: https://time.com/archive/6643931/society-in-a-box/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-08-19T04:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-26T16:36:05.841Z article:section: Science og:title: Society in a Box og:description: A honeybee's life, death and world og:url: https://time.com/archive/6643931/society-in-a-box/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Society in a Box twitter:description: A honeybee's life, death and world twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [Science](/section/science/) # Society in a Box > Sponsored content. 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Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=08757a93-2376-4ac6-84da-bf0e0ea9af25&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1) by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Aug 19, 2013 4:00 AM UTC by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Aug 19, 2013 4:00 AM UTC Humans have been keeping honeybees for thousands of years, yet the insects still manage to surprise us. Lost in the debate over what is causing the death of bees is how intricately complex their lives are, from the tiniest brood to the virgin queen. After all, what other invertebrate communicates by dance? THE ANATOMY Things you may not know about Apis mellifera ELECTROSTATIC CHARGE A charge on the bee’s hair attracts pollen. THE PROBOSCIS The airtight, strawlike tube sucks up nectar and also works in reverse to feed offspring from a honey stomach. MANDIBLE The jaws help bite and pack pollen as well as shape wax for building honeycomb. EYES Bees have five of them–two large compound eyes and three ocelli used to detect light intensity. A worker’s eyes have nearly 7,000 lenses. WING HOOKS Hooks enable the bee to attach one of each set of wings together during flight for maximum efficiency. LEGS Brushes scrape pollen from front to back, where it collects in the pollen basket, a sac attached to the rear leg. WAX PLATES Bees secrete wax beneath plates on their abdomen and use it to build honeycomb. WINGS A bee has two sets of wings. Rapid flapping generates warmth and evaporates water from nectar to make honey. HONEY STOMACH A second reservoir where nectar is temporarily stored before being regurgitated. STING When a bee stings, a barb prevents the stinger from being pulled out; the bee then tears its abdomen while freeing itself before dying. VENOM The unique mixture of chemicals that causes a sting to hurt may play a role in stopping the spread of HIV, which venom has been shown to destroy. • The oldest known honeybee specimen dates from 100 million years ago. • The 17th century naturalist Jan Swammerdam discovered that the king bee had ovaries and was, in fact, a queen. • In 1923 scientist Rudolf Steiner predicted that within 100 years artificial cultivation of honeybees would have severe consequences on the bee population. THE BASICS Actual size, 0.4–0.6 in. (5–15 mm) DUTIES WORKER Construction, storage, keeping the nursery, guarding, caretaking, scouting and foraging. DRONE Mates with a virgin queen in midair. Can fly backward, rotate and flip. QUEEN Lays up to 1,500 eggs a day, possibly more. Secretes pheromones to control workers. LIFE SPAN 20–30 days Dies after mating 3–7 years THE BREEDS There are 20,000 species of bees worldwide, but only six main types are kept commercially: ITALIAN RUSSIAN CARNIOLAN CAUCASIAN GERMAN BUCKFAST 1/12 TEASPOON Amount of honey a worker bee will produce during its short life $15 billion Estimated annual amount by which bee pollination increases crop value In a single trip, a worker bee can visit up to 100 flowers and carry more than half its weight in pollen In order to produce 1 lb. (0.4 kg) of honey, hive workers fly a collective 55,000 miles (89,000 km) and tap 2,000,000 flowers THE HIVE A colony typically comprises 20,000 to 30,000 bees. Although it has long been believed that bees hibernate in the winter, the colony creates a winter ecosystem inside the hive and lives off honey, with the bees maintaining warmth by working their wings. Middle-aged worker bees build by attaching each comb to the walls of the hive–a process that often requires more than 2 lb. (1 kg) of wax. THE DANCE When a scout worker has successfully located food, it alerts its fellow foragers about the food’s location with a series of dance moves. Through the number of turns, the duration of the dance and the moves themselves, the scout can communicate the distance to the food, the angle of the food to the sun and whether it is near or far. SUN The scout dances in a figure-eight shape to tell other workers to fly toward the sun. The number of dance patterns in a given time indicates distance. SUN The angle at which the scout dances gives the angle of the food source relative to the hive and the sun. FOOD HIVE NEARBY ROUND DANCE 60° FOOD HIVE THE FUTURE THE ROBOBEE Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences conducted the first successful flight of a life-size robotic fly in 2007\. The lab has received $10 million in grant money from the National Science Foundation to build a network of autonomous artificial bees. ARTIFICIAL MUSCLES CAN BEAT WINGS 120 TIMES PER SECOND AIRFOILS ROTATE INDEPENDENTLY WEIGHS 80 MG APPLICATIONS • SEARCH AND RESCUE • ARTIFICIAL POLLINATION • COVERT SURVEILLANCE • HIGH-RESOLUTION WEATHER AND CLIMATE MAPPING • TRAFFIC MONITORING Sources: Washington University School of Medicine; PBS; USDA; Roger A. Morse and Nicholas W. Calderone, Cornell University; Bee/Rose-Lynn Fisher; National Geographic; Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Bees/Lectures by Rudolf Steiner; North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6643931/society-in-a-box/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6643931/society-in-a-box/"},"headline":"Society in a Box","datePublished":"2013-08-19T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-26T16:36:05.841Z","description":"A honeybee's life, death and world","url":"https://time.com/archive/6643931/society-in-a-box/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"Science","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/science/","name":"Science"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6643931/society-in-a-box/","name":"Society in a Box"}}]}] ```