How to Care for an Injured Honeybee

Warm up a cold honeybee. If the temperature is around 12.8°C (55°F) or colder, a honeybee will be unable to fly. If the bee appears normal but moves sluggishly or can't lift off from the ground, it’s likely cold. Use a stiff piece of paper, such as a playing card, to gently pick up the bee and move it to a warmer location. Once warmed up, the bee should be able to fly off easily!

• If you need to bring the bee indoors to warm it up, place it in a breathable box with a lid. When the bee begins to move around more, you can take the box outside, open the lid, and place it on the ground.

Dry off the Wet Honeybee. If the bee is stuck in a cup of beer or lemonade, gently remove it! The bee’s wings may be so wet that it can’t fly. Place the bee in a dry, safe spot with warm sunlight to help its wings dry. Ideally, place it on a flower!

Feed the Bee to Help it Recover Faster. If the bee is cold or trembling, feeding it will help it regain strength. Mix a solution of 30% real honey and 70% room temperature water. Use a small dropper to place a few drops on a surface the bee can access.

• Make sure the mixture is placed on a non-absorbent surface.
• Be careful not to spill the mixture on the bee’s body.
• A mixture of organic sugar and water in a 1:1 ratio is also beneficial for the bee.

Examine the Bee’s Wings. If you find a bee outdoors in mid-summer or early autumn, it may be an old bee. Look closely at its wings. If they are torn at the edges, it might be nearing the end of its life cycle, though it still retains its foraging instincts! Bring the bee inside to feed it, and return it outdoors when it’s recovered and ready to fly.

• If the wings are intact, you may have found a worker bee that has been overworked and forgotten to drink.
• Leave the bee outside with a bit of honey-water mixture. The bee will return to work after it has refueled.

Leave the Bee Alone Most of the Time. If the bee can move a little, it may soon be able to fly again. Simply put, the bee needs rest, and it’s better to let it be, even if it has damaged wings.

• If you feel the need to offer the bee some water and honey, go ahead. Within a few minutes, it should be able to fly away.
• The best option is to place the bee on a flower and let nature heal it without interference from your actions.

Help a Honeybee with a Broken Wing. Understand that the bee may never be able to fly again and might soon pass away. However, the bee can live a bit longer if fed. Keep it in a well-ventilated box with a lid, along with some water and a few flowers. You can also place a bit of honey-water mixture on a leaf in a vase where the bee can easily find it. Do not try to glue the bee’s wings together.

• While you could use acrylic glue to reattach butterfly wings, it’s not effective on honeybee wings. Honeybee wings are fragile and difficult to handle, posing a danger to both you and the delicate wings. The bee will quickly groom the glued wings, causing the glue to spread over its body and injure itself.

Look for the small red spiders. It’s not entirely accurate to call them spiders, but if you find tiny red insects crawling on the honeybee, it means the bee is infected with parasites and cannot be saved. If the bee has been warmed and fed but still doesn’t move after a few minutes, take it outside and leave it there. A bee suffering from illness or parasites cannot be healed.

Do not touch the honeybee directly. While getting stung by a honeybee isn’t terribly dangerous, it will still cause pain. You can wear gloves to handle the bee and avoid being stung, but this may reduce your dexterity, making it harder to move the bee without causing more harm. Instead, gently and slowly place a thick piece of paper underneath the immobile bee to safely move or adjust it. If you’ve ever had an allergic reaction to any bee or bee sting, it’s best not to handle honeybees yourself.

Observe a Queen Bee carefully in spring! If you find a large honeybee on the ground during the spring, as the weather warms up, it could be a queen bee! If the queen emerges from hibernation too early, it could be too cold for her. Don’t hesitate to bring her indoors to warm up and feed her. However, plan to release the queen within a day, as the survival of the hive depends on her return.

• Typically, only the queen survives the winter. She is responsible for building a new colony in the coming year.

Don’t remove the honeybee hive in your yard. If no one in your household is allergic to bee stings and the hive isn’t located too close to high-traffic areas, don’t interfere. The hive will only remain for one season, and having a pollinator nearby is increasingly valuable as bee populations continue to decline. In fact, most honeybees only live for a few weeks.

Maintain bee foraging areas in your garden by planting bee-friendly species. Large-scale agriculture has increased honeybees' dependence on crops, making it more crucial to provide food sources that require minimal maintenance. Specifically, you can plant sweet clover, Dutch clover, alfalfa, purple vetch, birdfoot trefoil, and golden clover seeds in your soil.

• Encourage the growth of trees and shrubs such as linden, locust, buckthorn, Russian olive, wild plum, rice grass, red maple, willow, dogwood, and honeysuckle.
• Contact your local natural resource office for advice on which plants to grow that can support honeybees in your area.

Remove weeds by cutting or tilling the soil. Although you may need to use herbicides or pesticides to eliminate other pests, prioritizing cutting or pulling weeds in your garden reduces the risk of harming honeybees when you do need to use pesticides. This is especially important when weeds are thriving.

• For instance, trim weeds like nettles, garlic mustard, and dandelions before resorting to chemicals. If you don’t, these plants could become a hot spot for bees!

Avoid using pesticides while bees are foraging. In other words, don’t spray pesticides while crops are blooming! Many pesticides and insecticides come with warnings advising against their use when flowers are in bloom. Flowers attract honeybees, and applying insecticides during this time can reduce the number of honeybees in your area.

• Always read and follow the pesticide label instructions. Choose products with short-term pesticide residue and mild toxicity labels.
• Crops like alfalfa, sunflowers, and canola particularly attract honeybees, so exercise caution when treating these plants.

Survey the fields before using chemicals. To decide whether to mow the grass first, inspect your fields to see if any bees are foraging. Walk along the edge of the field and check any flowering plants. Keep in mind that flowers of some species don’t need to be bright-colored to attract bees.

Carefully consider the timing when applying insecticides. Pollen and nectar are only available to bees from certain plant species for a few hours each day. Therefore, it's crucial to observe your field during the time you plan to use chemicals, especially insecticides. Late evening to early morning is typically the ideal time. Apply insecticides between 8 PM and 6 AM.

• If the weather is expected to get colder after you spray, apply the insecticide early within this time frame. Cold weather can extend the toxicity of insecticides, meaning you will need more time before bees return to the field.
• For corn crops, insecticide application is best done between late afternoon and midnight.

Avoid using insecticides containing neonicotinoids. Certain pesticides are especially harmful, not only to bees but also to other beneficial insects. Neonicotinoids infiltrate the chemical structure of plants and are absorbed into the nectar and pollen. They can kill honeybees no matter when applied. The pharmaceutical company Bayer markets these types of insecticides to farmers and consumers alike.

• Be cautious with imidacloprid, as it is the most common neonicotinoid. Many Bayer products contain this ingredient. Understand that when you use these products, honey will be contaminated from crops.

Consider the dispersion rate. Dispersion refers to how far and in which direction chemicals are carried by the wind. To estimate the dispersion, you need to do two things. First, contact local beekeepers as early as possible before spraying. Additionally, minimize dispersion by reducing spray pressure and using nozzles that produce larger droplets.

Be cautious when using fungicides. Although fungicides are not formulated to kill honeybees, they can be toxic under certain conditions and indirectly harm them. For example, fungicides can make it harder for bees to locate and consume food. While fungicides like Propiconazole are considered safe for honeybees, they can be quite harmful when used with certain surfactants, fertilizers, and other common pesticides.