But only one kind makes honey: the honeybee. This bee species lives in large families, or colonies, and can be found all over the world. Female “worker” bees produce honey from pollen and nectar that they collect from plants on their fuzzy bodies while pollinating.

Honey is a sweet, viscous food substance made by honey bees and some related insects, such as stingless bees. Bees produce honey from the sugary secretions of plants (floral nectar) or from secretions of other insects (such as honeydew), by regurgitation, enzymatic activity, and water evaporation.

Honey can be stored without risk of spoilage, by social insects that produce it from the nectar or honeydew they collect from living plants. The insects include all Apis spp. (Apinae), almost all Meliponinae, all Bombus (Bombinae), honey wasps in the Polistinae, and honey ants in the Formicinae and Dolichoderinae.

Bees vs Flies Bees can be said to be closely related to ants and wasps whereas flies are not. Bees are known to make honey and store it. They are also known for their role in pollination. On the other hand, flies are only known to be attracted to honey and have no role in pollination.

All bees and wasps have four wings, but flies only have two wings. So you need to look very closely to count the number of wings on your insect. However, if your insect looks like a bee but it only has two wings, then it is definitely a fly.

“Having the legs extended generates stabilizing lift forces and helps reduce the moment of inertia and the slow rolling, similar to when a spinning figure-skater extends their arms”, explains Combes.

Honey bees have two sets of wings (four wings) that are attached to the thorax; the fore wings are much larger than the hind wings.

Hover flies, with their yellow markings, resemble wasps or bees but do not bite or sting. They are distinguished from other flies by a false (spurious) vein that closely parallels the fourth longitudinal wing vein.

If it seems like the sweat bee situation is especially bad this year. It could be due to the weather conditions in your part of the world. Hot, humid weather creates the perfect conditions for sweat bees to feed and breed.

Hover flies often swarm around people and even land on them, presumably looking for moisture and salts on our skin. These small flies are bright yellow and black in color and are often confused with sweat bees or a yellow jacket wasps but rest assured that these are flies and not bees. Flies cannot sting.

These bothersome small bees — they are in the Hymenoptera order, Halictid family of insects — are commonly called sweat bees because they’re attracted to human perspiration. They land on skin and lick the sweat off to get the salt.

Bees follow you because Sweat is sweet to bees. These bees are usually metallic in color and rather small and harder to notice than their yellow and black counterparts. These bees can sting but aren’t known for being aggressive towards humans. They just want to take a lick of that sweet, sweet sweat.

Tear-feeding is such a common behavior among insects, it has an official name: lachryphagy. These bees are often observed drinking tears from animal eyes; published observations include interactions with caimans and turtles. Bees aren’t the only insects that regularly drink from animal eyes.

There are bee species all over the world that also feed on the bodily fluids of living and dead animals, including animal honeydew, blood, dead meat, dung, sweat, faeces, urine and tears.

crocodiles

18. Torn Screens. Screens help to keep bugs out but even the tiniest tears will let bug-attracting odours through and can provide bugs with a way in.

Sperm contains sugar molecules, like every cell in one’s body. The extra sugars secreted in semen add to the effect. Ants can drink from fresh and sugary liquid to gain energy, and prefer sugar to keep themselves up and moving. Though it may be gross, ants might drink semen and gain nutrition from it.