Body hairy, marked with yellow and black, except for the hairless species Psithyrus. Lives socially, in annual colonies that consist of a queen, drones, and workers.
All species collect the pollen except for Psithyrus .
In the Catholic Church, candles once had to be made entirely out of beeswax. Today, only 25 percent of the candle must be beeswax. Beeswax has its place in the history of art. The Greeks and Romans modelled sculptures out of wax, as did Michelangelo. Madame Toussaud, born in 1823 in London, took the art to an extreme with her now world-famous wax museum.