They are large long-tongued bees with rounded and robust black-coloured bodies. They bear dense brown or black hairs, and have three submarginal cells in the forewings. Males often have white or pale yellow marks in the face whereas females bear well- developed pollen-carrying hairs on tibia and basitarsi of hind legs, but they do not have pollen-baskets (corbiculae). All species are solitary, although they can sometimes nest in aggregations. Most nest in the ground, cliffs or walls. When foraging on flowers they flight rapidly, making a strong buzzing noise, and sometimes they can hover.

We can found only one species of this genus in the Balearics, which is the domesticated honeybee Apis mellifera. Honeybees are medium-sized bees with a pale-brown hairy thorax and a cylindrical striped abdomen which varies in colour from orange-brown to nearly black. The eyes are also covered by short hairs. The forewing is characterised by a long thin marginal cell with almost parallel margins and three submarginal cells being the first one four-sided. Pollen is carried in pollen-baskets (corbiculae) on the hind legs which are enlarged and flattened areas of the tibia surrounded by hairs. The hind basitarsus are also broad. Honeybees have the most complex level of sociality in bees. They live in permanent colonies of thousands of individuals. In the wild, honeybee nests are often located in holes of trees or on rock fissures and consist of several vertical and parallel wax combs of hexagonal cells. A colony is composed by a single queen and her offspring. The queen is the egg-laying female, has a big abdomen, mates only once and stores the sperm. She spends most time laying eggs inside the hexagonal wax cells of the nest. Fertilised eggs develop into workers or queens depending on the larval diet. All larvae are fed with royal jelly during the first three days, but then larvae fed with pollen and honey become workers, and those which continue receiving royal jelly become new queens. Workers are infertile female bees and carry out the main tasks of the colony, such as nursing, foraging, cleaning, building and guarding. On the other hand, unfertilized eggs develop into drones, which are males whose main function is to mate with the new queens. Drones are broader and larger than workers, they have bigger eyes and lack corbiculae.

These are the commonly called bumblebees. They are large (11 – 25 mm) long-tongued bees with rounded black bodies densely covered by long and soft hairs forming contrasting bands of colours, such as yellow, black, white or red bands, in thorax and abdomen. These patterns of colour bandings can help to distinguish different species. Females have a well-developed pollen basket (corbicula) in the flattened tibia of hind legs where they clump pollen moistened with nectar. They are eusocial bees and live forming a colony of several hundred of individuals. Their lifecycle is annual, usually spanning from spring to autumn, with several generations during that period. Queens overwinter in burrows underground and emerge in spring. They forage for nectar and pollen in early-flowering species and begin building the nest (a spherical chamber) with diverse vegetal materials in abandoned small mammal burrows, other underground cavities or among dense vegetation. The queen also builds a honey pot with wax secreted by abdominal glands and fills it with regurgitated nectar. Close to it she lays some eggs in another cell with a pollen mass and incubates them. The first brood are workers that will help building more nest cells, tidying and feeding the young larvae with pollen and regurgitated nectar. The colony keeps growing with several generations of workers. Late in the season, males and new queens are born, and they mate. At the end of the season the colony disintegrates, the old queen, workers and males die, and fertilised new queens seek for good sites to hibernate. Bumblebees are important pollinators and they have the ability to forage even in cloudy and cold weather. There are three species of Bombus cited in the Balearic Islands: B. terrestris –the most common in all islands – B. pascuorum and B. lapidarius.

They are solitary long-tongued bees of medium or large size. Males are easily recognised by their extremely long antennae, which can be as long as their body, and which gives them the common name of long-horned bees. Females, by contrast, look similar to Anthophora, though they have two rather than three submarginal cells in the forewings. Usually, they have black bodies covered with abundant golden, yellow- brown or orange hairs, sometimes forming bands in the abdomen. Moreover, females have well-developed pollen-carrying hairs on the tibia and basitarsi of the hind legs. They nest underground sometimes in dense aggregations.

This is a genus of cleptoparasitic bees (‘cuckoo bees’), and their usual hosts are species in the Andrena genus. They are small or medium size bees which look like wasps. Their body is usually long without hairs and with bright yellow, red or black coloured bands and spots. Females lay their eggs in the wall nest of other bees when they are away. When the Nomada larvae hatch, they kill the egg or host larvae with their strong mandibles and develop feeding on the pollen and nectar stored by the host bee.