Douce Brise Apiary - Les Avants

We're often asked what kind of relationship links bees to wasps. Are they cousins? Distant relatives, or no kin at all? And bumblebees? Are they males? And hornets, where do they come from?

 

So here's a family tree, or rather, an evolutionary tree. We can see that wasps are in the same "superfamily" as ants, but to find honeybees, we have to go much further down the classification (their separation dates back 80 million years):

 

     > family

     > subfamily

     > tribe

     > genus

     > species

 

And going through all these "levels," we encounter solitary bees and... bumblebees, at the tribe level, so very close by. Yes, bumblebees are indeed bees, and for the most part, females despite their masculine name in French (at the time of the naming, if it was bigger, it must have been a male 😂).

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The hornet, for its part, is indeed a member of the wasp superfamily (and is very often female as well).