What Species of Bees are There?

Around the world there are actually 25,000 different species of bees. Solely in the United States there are 4000 bees. Of course, all of these bees are not good for your hives. You want to make sure that the bees you have are going to be good for producing honey and some of the common types, such as bumblebees, are not good for producing honey.

As you probably expected, honeybees are the ones that you want for your hives. These are the bees that are going to get you the most for your money. You’ll get plenty of honey with this. You’ll still want to consider different ‘stocks’ of honeybees as well. Each stock has different traits and different benefits. So what can they provide for you?

Italian Honeybees: These bees are very light in color and moderately gentle. They don’t engage in excess swarming and do well through the process of cold weather and winter. They are also very good at processing honey which means more money for you in the end.

German Honeybees: These bees are quite dark with a low gentleness and are very good at weathering the cold weather. They are also pretty good about not swarming and produce a decent amount of honey.

Carniolan Honeybees: These bees are black in color. They are extremely gentle though they also have a high tendency of swarming. You’ll notice that their honey processing is pretty good and that they weather the cold fairly well.

Buckfast Honeybees: Medium in color, these bees have low-moderate gentleness. They also have decent wintering ability, a low tendency for swarming and a good honey processing level.

Caucasian Honeybees: These bees are very dark in color but are also very gentle with a very low tendency for swarming. They also produce very little honey and are not as good at wintering.

Russian Honeybees: Finally, these bees are gray in color with low-moderate gentleness. They also have very good ability to weather the cold and produce a decent amount of honey with only a moderate level of swarming.