I love bees, they are one of my favorite groups of animals, and they appear to be becoming increasingly popular in the cultural zeitgeist - lots of stickers, dishtowels, etc stating 'save the bees', and so on. Despite this, lots of laypeople seem to misunderstand bees fundamentally, which I guess is ok, they are an incredibly diverse group of insects. Any public positive interest in an insect is a win. But I think it would be great if more people really appreciated and understood this insect a bit more.
Here I will address several myths and misconceptions about bees. Those with a little interest in biology probably already know about some of these, which is awesome! Please share your knowledge with your friends and peers. Regardless, I hope you love bees a little more by the end of the post.
1. Myth: honey bees are natively found in the Americas.
Honey bees, which are technically only one species of the 20,000+ species of bee, are native to Eurasia and Africa. They were introduced to North America in the 1700s for honey production, where of course many escaped and formed feral (wild) colonies. Since then they have spread to almost every corner of the continent and can be found in all continental states in the US, including in my backyard. Any honey bee you see in North America is not a native species.
As a result if you want to 'save the bees', focusing on honey bees in the US makes as much sense as saving cows because mammals are endangered. Even in Europe where they are native, honey bees that are kept by beekeepers don't really represent wild animals, so this is also equivalent to keeping a farm of cows in order to save the mammals. Bees kept by beekeepers are domesticated animals.
A famous pollen biologist, Jeff Ollerton, explained it this way: "Keeping [honey bee] hives to save the bees is like keeping chickens to save the birds”.
2. Myth: bees live in colonies with a queen and workers.
This type of behavior is termed 'highly eusocial' and is rarely found in insects, including in bees. This social behavior is so tightly associated with all bees because this is how honey bees live. They build a hive to store honey, the colony can live continuously for multiple years, and the worker bees are produced by a queen bee. This is highly specific behavior that lies on one end of the sociality spectrum. 75% or more bee species do not live this way.
The majority of bee species are called 'solitary bees' because they don't live in social groups. Solitary bee females build and provide for a nest they create on their own - there are no workers.
There are intermediates to social behavior - it's a spectrum. Bumble bees do something in-between, where they do have workers and a queen, but don't produce honey, and the colony lasts for one year. Some bees build individual nests but aggregate them close to one another. Others will share a common nest entrance and then build their own cells beyond that, kind of like an apartment complex.
There are other highly eusocial bees other than honey bees and these are almost exclusively from the stingless bees, a group that is mostly in the South American and African tropics (and Australia). These are pretty weird in their own right, so I might reserve other information for a separate post on those guys.
I will also add that these highly eusocial species (honey bees, stingless bees) are the only ones that make honey. No other bee species does this.
Basically bees are a really big group of different species, so they're also very diverse in their behavior. It's difficult to categorize all bees as having this or that behavior because of this variation.
3. Myth: all bees have stingers, and the bee dies when it stings you.
Only female insects have stingers, because the stinger evolved from the ovipositor, a tube-like structure used for laying eggs. Only female bees have stingers, and this is true for all insects (including wasps). This means that you can technically grab any male bee out there and it can't really hurt you. Fortunate for the bee, its difficult to determine sex unless you look pretty closely (female bees wear a pink bow; males look neutral of course).
You've probably heard that a bee's stinger rips out of its body after stinging. This is mostly true for honey bees (*shakes fist* it's always honey bees!). Their stinger has ridges and sticks in the skin, making it difficult to pull back out. As a result, the bee often dies after stinging a person, because pulling the stinger out rips out its innards.
Other bees (aka every other bee species) have no ridges on the stinger, so can (and will) sting you as many times as necessary. Queen honey bees also don't have ridges, and they use their stingers to fight other queens in the battle for the crown (several queens can be produced at once in a given hive).
4. Myth: bees live in wax hives.
This is kind of related to the eusocial issue above but I wanted to separate it out just because bee nesting behavior is so (you guessed it) diverse. Only eusocial bees build these big (usually wax) hives, and the rest of the bees (mostly solitary) do their own thing. Solitary bees use a spectrum of different nests! This includes nesting underground in pre-existing burrows, digging out their own burrows, digging into clay sediment, boring into wood, using hollow stems or reeds, using snail shells (!!), using any kind of cavity, and even co-opting nests built by other bees.
Some types include super deep burrows with separate nest cells built off a main tunnel. Bees with large mandibles will carve out sediment in a bank to create nests. Lots of bees will dig into wood, especially carpenter bees. In the desert here, they bore holes into yucca plant stems. Reed-nesters are a well known group that lay eggs in a series up the length of a hollow reed. Amazingly (and charmingly) some mason bees will use discarded snail shells, even turning the shell upright so it doesn't hold water1.
A special group are the nest parasites, bees that lay their eggs in other species' nests! These are sort of like the cuckoo birds that you may have heard of - they are even called cuckoo bees. Nest parasites look for another bee in the midst of creating and provisioning a nest, then try to sneak in and lay their own eggs in there. Often these parasite larvae will even eat the original larvae in the nest! Crazy! There are entire groups of bumble bee species that are nest parasites (often called cuckoo bumble bees).
I think that's enough about bees for today. I hope you appreciate these critters a little more now. Wherever you live, there are probably native bee species around, so take some time outside to look for them and I bet you can witness something interesting.
Want to learn more about bees?
iNaturalist: check the map for your region and see what kind of bees might be around. Take photos of bees yourself and upload them, it's a great resource for researchers!
pollinator.org: US-specific website with lots of info about what native plants to have, etc.
Bumble Bee Atlas: US-specific citizen science project for documenting bumble bees. Please take part!
Texas Bee Guide: its Texas-specific but still a great resource for leaning about all kinds of bees. Lots of great photos also.
lucky instar 
