Course materials
Wild bees represent quite a large group of insects. It is estimated that on Earth there are about 25-30 thousand species of bees [2]. List of bees occurring in Poland currently consists of 474 species, of which approx. 10% shows some degree of social development. The remaining 90% of the species is solitary bees, which do not form organized communities [3].
Bee family is a collective organism, which consist of 3 main parts: a queen bee, bee workers and drones. The main task of the queen bee is to reproduce and emanate pheromones that merge the whole family. She can lay two types of eggs: impregnated, from which females (larvae of workers or queens) are hatched, or not impregnated, from which males – drones - are hatched.