Bee Statistics ~ Part Four of Bee Series

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Bees are omnivores and feed on nectar and pollen. The top speed of a bee is about 15-20 miles per hour. They live in hives of about 10,000 to 60,000 in population size. Beekeeping has been practiced since Ancient Greece and Egypt. Bees appear in both folklore, mythology, and art from ancient times to the present day. There are approximately 20,000 species of bees around the world. About 250 species in the UK, 2000 in the rest of Europe, and about 4,000 species in the U.S. There are seven recognized biological families of bees including honey bees, bumblebees, and stingless bees who live socially in colonies while leafcutter, carpenter, sweat, and mason types of bees are solitary. The most common in the Northern Hemisphere is the Halictidae or sweat bees. These are small and often are mistaken for wasps or flies. Bees range in size from the tiny stingless bee species which is about 0.08 inches long to the Megachile pluto, the largest species of leafcutter bee, and the females can be as large as 1.54 inches long. Bees exist in all types of climates from forests in Europe to deserts in Africa and, this includes the Arctic Circle. Wild bees, unlike honey bees, live in many different places such as trees, holes, and underground. The western honey bee is the most commonly managed pollinator globally with this species producing 1.6 million tons of honey yearly. Most pollinators, however, are wild. Bats, butterflies, moths, birds, wasps, beetles, flies, and some species of vertebrates also pollinate. There are 369,000 species of flowering plant species and 90% of them are dependent upon insect pollination. Many animals are also dependent upon insect pollination because the food they eat includes nuts, fruits and these are dependent on pollination. Crops pollinated by bees make up 35% of global food production. This crop is valued at $577 billion. Pollinators contribute to about one-third of the food consumed by the U.S.(or about $24 billion). There are about 91 million kept hives in the world and millions of feral ones. There has been a 30% or higher decline in beehives over the last ten years with 1 in 4 wild bee species are at risk of extinction. Factors that contribute to this decline include increased use of pesticides, fragmentation of bee habitat, climate collapse disorder, and climate change. In 2017 the rusty-patched bumblebee was added to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service endangered species list due to a decline in the population of 87%. Seven yellow-faced bee species, which are Hawaii's only native bees, were added to the Endangered Species Act around the same time. This is a first for bees in the U.S.