Bees & Wasps

Why Bees Matter

There’s a lot of buzz around bees — and for good reason. These insects are vital to the environment, driving pollination, helping plants flourish, and producing honey. They pollinate a huge share of flowering plants, including many of the crops we depend on, so a world without bees would be a far poorer one. That said, bees become a genuine concern when they set up shop near or inside your property. A sting can be painful, and for anyone allergic to bee venom it can be life-threatening, so knowing the types and their behavior is the first step toward a sensible plan.

The Many Types of Bees

Most people picture honey bees or bumble bees, but there are more than 20,000 species in a remarkable range of shapes and sizes. In the United States you’ll commonly run into bumble bees, carpenter bees, honey bees (including European, Africanized, and Japanese varieties), and sweat bees. Closely related stinging insects like wasps, hornets, and yellowjackets are far more aggressive than bees and account for many of the painful encounters around homes.

How Long Bees Live

Lifespan depends heavily on the bee’s role. A bee’s life moves through four stages — egg, larva, pupa, and adult — and how long it lasts is shaped by activity level, diet, and available resources. Queens, the colony’s reproducers, can live two to five years. Drones exist mainly to mate with the queen and often die shortly afterward. Worker bees, which gather nectar and tend the hive, average only about five to seven weeks.

How Bees Make Honey

Honey bees are the species behind that sweet, sticky substance. They use long tongues to draw nectar from flowers and store it in a special “honey sac,” where an enzyme begins breaking it down. Back at the hive, bees pass the nectar mouth-to-mouth and chew it for around half an hour, gradually lowering its moisture from roughly 70% down to about 20%. The result is honey, with flavor, color, and aroma that vary by the flowers the nectar came from.

What Bees Eat

Bees feed mainly on nectar and pollen collected from flowers — nectar supplies energy-rich carbohydrates, while pollen provides protein and nutrients. Honey bee larvae typically eat honey, except for those chosen to become queens, who are fed royal jelly, a protein-rich secretion that helps the future queen grow to roughly double the size of an ordinary worker.

What to Do About a Bee or Wasp Problem

DIY tactics are often both dangerous and ineffective because they rarely address the source. The right first step is identifying the species, its location, and the size of the colony. It also matters because some bees, like honey bees, are protected — removal is a last resort and ideally handled with a beekeeper. Our participating providers can inspect the property, develop a treatment plan, and seal entry points to keep these insects out, reserving treatment of honey bees for situations where safe relocation isn’t possible and they pose a real threat.