We think the life of an insect is short and insignificant. How much can you possibly experience during a life span of 6-weeks? And aren’t beehives the epitome of the “collective” – thousands of dumb worker bees in the service of a queen bee? The latest science, however, paints a completely different picture: bee colonies are not as homogeneous as we believe, but instead full of ‘individuals’ with very different tasks, abilities and even preferences. There are courageous, cowardly and – yes – lazy bees.

And every single bee faces the challenges of its life – finding flowers, fighting hornets and finding the right place to build a nest. They show extraordinary intelligence and social skills: Bees help each other in danger and prefer to fly out into the world in the same teams. But they’d better not be surprised by a rain shower – a rain drop can be fatal … A bee’s life may last only 6 weeks, but for them that’s a lifetime.