STINGING INSECT GUIDE

European honey bee

Identification, local timing in San Antonio and the Hill Country, risk profile, and exactly how we treat it.

Scientific name: Apis mellifera (Linnaeus, 1758) Common names: European honey bee, Western honey bee, honeybee Family: Apidae Status in the San Antonio / Boerne corridor: These bees are naturalized and can be found year-round. They are quite common in our area.

At a glance #

Identification #

Honey bees are stocky, fuzzy, and amber-colored. They have that classic "bee" shape that comes to mind when people think of bees. When they return to the nest, you can see their hind legs loaded with yellow-to-orange pollen, packed into structures called corbiculae, or pollen baskets.

The most common mix-up is between honey bees and yellowjackets. The difference is clear: honey bees are fuzzy, while yellowjackets are sleek and shiny. Honey bees have rounder bodies and fly at a slower, more deliberate pace, unlike the sharp, darting flight of yellowjackets that seem to zoom right for your sandwich.

Three castes live together in the colony:

• Workers — these are the sterile females you see buzzing around flowers. They handle all the tasks except for laying eggs and mating.
• Drones — the males. They’re bigger and have huge eyes that take up most of their heads. Drones can’t sting.
• Queen — she’s the only reproductive female in the hive, longer than the workers, and has a significantly larger abdomen.

Biology and behavior #

The colony #

Each colony has one queen at the top. During peak times, she can lay about 1,500 eggs a day, and sometimes over 2,000 when spring really kicks in. According to Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, by the end of her life, she’ll have laid hundreds of thousands of eggs, with every other bee in the colony being her offspring.

Worker bees follow a clear path as they age. They begin as cell cleaners, then progress to nursing the brood, building comb, storing and processing nectar, and guarding the entrance. It’s only in the last 2–3 weeks of their lives that they become foragers. I’ve seen estimates that a single worker bee can handle up to 90 different tasks throughout its lifetime.

Worker bees have a short lifespan that changes with the seasons. In summer, a worker bee usually lasts about 5–6 weeks — she works herself to the bone. In contrast, a "winter bee," raised in the fall, has a different makeup and can survive 4–6 months, helping the colony make it through winter. According to Penn State Extension, queens can live anywhere from 1–5 years, depending on their environment, but commercial beekeepers generally replace them every 1–2 years to keep the colony productive.

Drones: the short, strange life of a male bee #

Drones are pretty much useless when it comes to the day-to-day operations of a hive. They don’t forage for food, build honeycombs, guard the hive, or clean up. Plus, they can’t sting because their so-called "stinger" is really just a modified ovipositor, which only females have. The only thing drones are good for is mating with a virgin queen from another colony.

This story doesn’t end well for the drone. Mating takes place mid-air at drone congregation areas, usually between 60 and 300 feet up. When a drone manages to mate with a queen, his reproductive organ — which is barbed, similar to a worker's stinger — tears off inside her, taking part of his abdomen with it. He falls out of the sky and dies within minutes.

Drones that don't mate have a rough time too. When fall hits and nectar flow stops, the female workers stop feeding them. They drag the drones to the entrance and kick them out of the hive. Once evicted, drones usually die of starvation and exposure in just a few days. No drones make it through the winter.

The waggle dance #

This is the famous one, and it lives up to the hype. When a forager bee discovers a good food source, she goes back to the nest and does a figure-8 dance on the vertical surface of the comb. This dance conveys two key details with impressive accuracy:

• Direction — The angle of the waggle run shows the position of the food source in relation to the sun. If the waggle run is straight up, it means "fly toward the sun." A 45-degree angle to the left indicates "fly 45 degrees to the left of the sun."
• Distance — The length of the waggling part of the run tells bees how far away the food is. A longer waggle means a longer flight.

Karl von Frisch figured out this communication system in the mid-20th century and snagged the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for it. What's fascinating is that a study in PLOS Biology in 2007 revealed that dancing bees also let out specific chemical compounds from their abdomens, like alkanes and alkenes—particularly tricosane, pentacosane, and their Z-9 alkene variants. This helps recruit other bees to leave the hive and join the foraging. So, the dance is more than just movement; it's also about chemistry.

The hive is an active climate system #

Honey bees keep their brood nest at about 95°F (35°C) all year long. When it gets too hot, worker bees gather water and fan their wings at the entrance to cool the hive through evaporation. It’s really just like how an evaporative cooler works. If it’s too cold, they cluster around the brood and vibrate their flight muscles to generate heat. A tightly packed cluster can keep the hive warm, even when outside temperatures drop well below freezing.

Food supply #

Honey bees are well-known for their signature product — honey. This sweet treat is concentrated nectar that worker bees dehydrate by fanning until the water content drops to about 17%. At that point, it won’t ferment and can last indefinitely. They also make beeswax, produced by glands on the underside of their abdomens, which is part of the young workers’ development. Another interesting product is propolis, a resin-based "bee glue" they gather from tree buds. They use this sticky material to seal cracks in their hives and as an antimicrobial coating for their nests.

A single foraging trip can gather nectar from 100 to 1,500 flowers and usually takes about 30 to 60 minutes. When the nectar flow is strong, a healthy colony can make tens of thousands of these trips in a single day.

Local context — San Antonio and the Hill Country #

Honey bees aren't originally from the Americas. They arrived with European colonists in the 1600s, and feral populations quickly spread across the continent as settlers moved west. In some areas, Native Americans referred to them as "white man's flies" since their presence often signaled the arrival of Europeans.

In San Antonio, honey bees are buzzing every month of the year. There's no real dormant season like you see in colder places. This is important because if you've got a honey bee colony in your walls or attic, it's a problem that sticks around all year, not something that just disappears in winter.

Swarm season peaks from March to June, with a smaller wave happening in September after the fall nectar flow. In a typical Hill Country spring, a strong colony can produce one to three swarms. The old queen heads out with about half the workers to scout for a new nest, while the new queen stays behind to run the original colony.

In the corridor from San Antonio through Boerne, Leon Springs, Fair Oaks Ranch, and into Kerrville, mature live oaks are the top choice for natural cavities. On homes, we most often find stinging insects in wall voids behind stone or stucco, soffit returns, chimney flues, and water meter boxes. Meter boxes are a big problem — CPS Energy and San Antonio Water System readers frequently come across occupied bee colonies in these boxes during the spring swarm season.

Important caveat for Central Texas: almost every feral honey bee colony south of the Austin line has Africanized genetics (check out our Africanized Honey Bee guide). Managed colonies from beekeepers act like regular European honey bees. But if you stumble upon a colony in a wall, tree, or meter box, treat it as potentially defensive.

Risk to humans and pets #

Low to moderate risk is typical for most stinging insects. However, if you're dealing with an Africanized colony or someone has an allergy, that risk shoots up to high.

A honey bee sting releases about 50–140 micrograms of venom. For most folks, a few stings result in localized pain and swelling, which usually clears up in 24–48 hours. However, around 1–3% of people are allergic to bee venom. If you're one of them, a sting could lead to severe anaphylaxis within minutes, and that’s a medical emergency, according to CDC.

The barbed stinger stays in your skin after a worker bee stings. It can keep pumping venom for 30 to 60 seconds. Quick removal helps lessen the amount of venom you get. Scrape it out with your fingernail or a credit card instead of pinching it, which can push more venom in.

Structural concerns #

A colony in your wall isn’t just about the risk of stings; it can cause serious damage over time. A big colony can pack away 40–80 pounds of honeycomb in a cavity. If we eliminate the bees but leave the comb behind, you might face issues down the line.

The wax comb can warm up and soften if there are no bees around to cool it down. When honey is left unguarded, it draws in small hive beetles, wax moths, ants, roaches, and even rodents. I've seen honey seep through wall cavities and leak into drywall, causing stains on ceilings and inside walls. That lingering "bee smell" in the void? It brings in new swarms year after year.

Every complete honey bee removal involves opening the cavity, removing the comb, cleaning the space, and sealing entry points. "Just spray them" doesn't cut it for a structural colony. I've seen too many cases where a quick fix leads to bigger problems down the line.

Odd, funny, and genuinely true #

• Honey bees have five eyes. They have two large compound eyes like you'd expect and three small simple eyes (ocelli) on top of their heads. Those little ones help them navigate by detecting light intensity.
• Drones (males) have no father, but they do have a grandfather. Honey bees are haplodiploid, meaning unfertilized eggs become drones with half the chromosomes, while fertilized eggs turn into females. A drone comes from an unfertilized egg, so he has just a mother. But his mother had a father, giving him a grandfather. Genetics can be tricky!
• Archaeologists have recovered edible honey from Egyptian tombs sealed over 3,000 years ago. Honey's low moisture content, low pH, and trace hydrogen peroxide from bee enzymes make it one of the most microbially hostile foods on Earth.
• The queen bee has a stinger, but it isn't barbed like a worker's. She can sting multiple times without dying. Surprisingly, she rarely stings humans; she saves it for rival queens in the hive, where they fight for dominance.
• Honey bees recognize human faces under laboratory conditions. When trained with sugar-water rewards, they can tell individual human faces apart from photographs. This skill isn't natural; it’s a byproduct of their amazing ability to recognize flower patterns.
• Research published in 2002 showed elephants are afraid of honey bees. When they hear recordings of disturbed African honey bee colonies, elephants tend to walk or run away. Some African farmers use "beehive fences" around crops to keep elephants away — a clever conservation method that also gives them honey.
• A honey bee will fly, in total, about 500 miles in her lifetime as a forager and will produce roughly 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in that time. So, every teaspoon you enjoy on your toast comes from about twelve bees' entire foraging efforts.
• Most of North America's large-scale honey bee pollination happens via semi-truck. Nearly every almond in California gets pollinated by hives that were in Texas, Florida, or the Dakotas just a month earlier. Around 1.5 million hives are transported to California each February for almond bloom — the largest managed-pollination event on the planet.
• Bees sleep. Foragers rest at night in a position similar to how mammals sleep, with drooping antennae and lower body temperature. If they don't get enough sleep, their dance moves become less accurate the next day, making it harder for them to communicate food locations. They're the first known insects whose cognitive performance drops without sleep.

Common questions customers ask #

• Yes, we will remove the bees. It's often necessary for safety.
• Some may be Africanized honey bees, especially in this area.
• Bee removal costs can vary, but we typically charge based on the job size and complexity.
• Yes, removing honeycomb is important to prevent future problems.
• Bees can get into walls searching for shelter or food sources.
• To get rid of bees in your chimney, we need to safely remove them and seal the entry points.
• In Texas, bee swarm season usually runs from March to June.
• It's not safe to live with bees in your walls; they can become a risk for stings and structural damage.

We've looked at solid research on honey bee communication, including the work by Sheehan & Tibbetts in PLOS Biology about waggle dance chemistry. Our information also comes from USDA and university extension publications, along with primary studies on bee behavior and colony structure. The seasonal timing is based on what we've documented in Central Texas.

Frequently asked questions #

How can I identify a European Honey Bee? #

European Honey Bees are typically about ½ inch long and have a golden-brown coloration with black bands on their abdomen. They also have hairy bodies, which help them collect pollen. If you see bees hovering around flowers or your garden, they are likely honey bees.

What is the typical behavior of European Honey Bees in San Antonio? #

In San Antonio, European Honey Bees are generally active from early spring through late fall. They are social insects that live in colonies and work together to gather nectar and pollen. While they can be defensive of their hive, they are usually not aggressive unless provoked.

Are European Honey Bees dangerous to humans? #

While European Honey Bees can sting, they are generally not aggressive unless their hive is threatened. Most stings occur when someone accidentally disturbs a colony. For those allergic to bee stings, however, any encounter can pose a significant risk.

When is the best time to treat for European Honey Bees in the Texas Hill Country? #

The best time to treat for European Honey Bees is typically in late spring or early summer when their populations are at their peak. However, if you notice a hive forming at any time, it’s best to address it sooner rather than later to prevent it from growing.

What is your process for removing a honey bee hive? #

At Pest Trappers, we assess the situation first to determine the size and location of the hive. We then use methods that focus on safe removal, often relocating the bees to a beekeeper if possible. Our team ensures that the area is treated to prevent any future infestations.

Last reviewed April 25, 2026 by Travis Lambert (Owner).