A western honey bee on a coneflower moves from one tiny flower to the next across the central disk. First, watch where she lands. Then see which other insects arrive while she feeds. A single patch can show you how many different visitors share a flower.
Meet the western honey bee
The western honey bee (Apis mellifera) is the familiar species that most U.S. beekeepers keep. A worker visits flowers for nectar and pollen. Pollen that rubs off on another flower can help the plant make seeds. To explore how workers share their finds with the colony, visit our honey bee colony guide and hive challenge.
How often do honey bees visit wildflowers?
A research team compared flower visits across 80 networks of plants and pollinators worldwide. Honey bees averaged about 13% of visits across the networks. The figure ranged from zero in some places to 85% in another. These are counts of flower visits. For example, two patches of the same flower can have different visitors. Read the original study of honey bees in natural habitats.
Which flowers did the researchers see bees visit?
Observers recorded only honey bee visits on about 5% of the plant species they studied. In contrast, observers saw other visitors on nearly half the plant species and recorded no honey bees on them. Whether a plant depends on one particular pollinator is a different question that calls for more evidence than a list of visitors.
Where were honey bee visits most common?
Honey bees accounted for a larger share of visits at warmer sites and on the mainland. That pattern describes the places the researchers compared. Because flower visitors change through the day, watch the same patch several times and keep a tally.
How much pollen does one visit move?
A western honey bee can visit a flower without moving much pollen. On the plant species where researchers could compare individual visits, honey bees performed about as well as the average visitor. However, a different pollinator could move more pollen for a particular flower. Protecting a range of bees helps keep those relationships intact.
Look for more than one kind of visitor
After a western honey bee leaves a bloom, stay a little longer. A smaller bee or a fly may land on the same flower. Can you see which parts of the flower they brush against? Draw what you see, even if you have no name for the insect yet.
Try a five-minute flower watch
Pick one open flower and watch from a comfortable distance for five minutes. While you watch, count each landing and jot down what the visitor looked like. Next, try the same flower patch at another time of day. Even seeing no visitors is worth writing down. For plant choices that give bees more to visit, explore our pollinator garden guide.