How far do bees fly from their nest?
Short answerIt depends
It depends enormously on the bee. A honey bee will fly over ten kilometres if she has to and usually forages within one to three. Most solitary bees range only a few hundred metres, and the smallest barely manage that. Foraging range scales with body size, consistently across the whole order.
The range of ranges
| Bee | Usual | Maximum recorded |
|---|---|---|
| Western honey bee | 1-3 km | Over 10 km |
| Bumblebees | A few hundred metres to 2 km | Around 3 km |
| Mason and leafcutter bees | 100-600 m | About 1 km |
| Small solitary bees | 50-300 m | A few hundred metres |
A honey bee's ten kilometres is a maximum rather than a preference. Flight costs energy, and a forager who burns more sugar reaching a patch than she brings home has cost the colony. Decoding waggle dances shows the effect directly: when forage is close, most recruitment is within a kilometre, and when the landscape is poor the average dance distance rises.
Why this is the most practical fact in bee gardening
How anyone knows
- Decoding the waggle dance, which gives distance and direction from the bee's own report. Only works for honey bees.
- Mark-and-recapture and harmonic radar, which track individuals physically. Practical for large bees only.
- Genetic sibling analysis across a landscape, which infers how far a mother must have ranged. This is the standard method for solitary bees, which are far too small to carry a transmitter.
Sources
- The Lives of Bees: The Untold Story of the Honey Bee in the Wild — Princeton University Press (2019) · Monograph
- The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees — Harvard University Press (1967) · Monograph
- Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland — Bloomsbury (2015) · Field guide
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.
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