Last Updated September 15, 2026
The European bee-eater (Merops apiaster) is exactly what its name promises: a strikingly colorful bird that specializes in catching flying insects on the wing, and in parts of its range honeybees make up close to half the diet fed to its chicks. For beekeepers across southern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, where the species breeds or winters, this isn’t a trivia fact — it’s a real, if usually manageable, source of forager losses that shows up as bees visibly disappearing near an apiary during the bird’s breeding season — one entry on the fairly short list of vertebrate predators that actually target adult foraging bees rather than brood or stores.
Key Takeaways
- The European bee-eater (Merops apiaster) breeds across southern Europe, North Africa, and parts of western Asia, and winters mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, with a separate resident population in southern Africa.
- A 2024 peer-reviewed study of five Iberian Peninsula colonies found honeybees made up an estimated 37.3% of adult diet, with total Hymenoptera share ranging from 42% to 96% depending on the local habitat.
- Bee-eaters catch prey entirely in flight, then return to a perch and beat the insect against the branch to remove its stinger before swallowing it — a specific, learned technique that lets them safely eat stinging insects.
- A 2016 Spanish study estimated a single bee-eater eats roughly 1,333 honeybees during its entire stay in an area — well under the 36,000-45,000 bees a healthy colony can regenerate in a single month, which is why researchers described the apiary-level impact as generally negligible.
- A 2023 Portuguese study found the first documented evidence of bee-eaters preying on the invasive yellow-legged hornet, raising the possibility the birds could play a small biocontrol role against that spreading pest in areas where their ranges overlap.
Table of Contents
- A Bird Named for Exactly What It Does
- How Much of the Diet Is Actually Honeybees
- How a Bee-Eater Eats a Bee Without Getting Stung
- What This Actually Means for an Apiary
- An Unexpected Upside: Yellow-Legged Hornet Predation
- What the Research Actually Says: Study by Study
- Frequently Asked Questions
A Bird Named for Exactly What It Does
Few animal common names are as literal as the bee-eater’s. Merops apiaster is a mid-sized, brilliantly colored bird — teal underparts, a chestnut crown and back, a bright yellow throat, and a slim, slightly curved black bill — found breeding across a wide band from Portugal and Spain east through the Mediterranean and into western Asia, with an additional, geographically separate resident population in southern Africa. Most Northern Hemisphere breeders migrate to spend the winter in sub-Saharan Africa, making it a genuinely long-distance migrant as well as a highly social one: bee-eaters nest colonially, digging tunnel nests up to about 1.5 meters (5 feet) long into sandy banks and riverbanks in tight-knit groups, and communicate constantly with sharp, rolling vocal calls that carry well across open country.
How Much of the Diet Is Actually Honeybees
The bird’s reputation isn’t exaggerated, though the exact numbers vary considerably by habitat and study. A 2024 peer-reviewed study of bee-eater colonies across five distinct habitats on the Iberian Peninsula found honeybees (Apis mellifera) alone made up an estimated 37.3% of adult diet, and total Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, and ants combined) accounted for 58.8% of adult diet and 64.1% of what was fed to chicks overall — but that Hymenoptera share swung from as low as 42.3% in oak-forest and pasture colonies up to 95.7% in meadow and mixed-forest colonies, depending on what other prey was locally available. An earlier, more Mediterranean-focused study of colonies in the Murcia region of southeastern Spain reached a similar conclusion about honeybee dominance among the Hymenoptera eaten, while also finding real seasonal and site-to-site variation in exactly how many bees ended up in the average pellet.
Diet composition isn’t uniform across the bird’s full range: local prey availability, not just species preference, shapes how much of any one insect group actually ends up in a given colony’s diet, which is exactly why a beekeeper in a meadow-adjacent colony’s territory may see a very different picture than one near an oak forest.
How a Bee-Eater Eats a Bee Without Getting Stung
Catching a flying bee is only half the problem; eating one without a mouthful of venom is the other. Bee-eaters hunt entirely on the wing, sallying out from an exposed perch to snatch flying insects in midair before returning to the same or a nearby perch. Once back on the perch, the bird doesn’t simply swallow its catch — it repeatedly strikes the insect against the branch, a behavior that serves to disable and, critically, discharge or remove the stinger before the prey is eaten. This isn’t a universal reflex found in every insect-eating bird; it’s a specific, apparently learned handling technique that lets bee-eaters exploit a food source — venomous, stinging Hymenoptera — that most other birds largely avoid, which is a significant part of why the species can specialize so heavily on bees and wasps in the first place.
What This Actually Means for an Apiary
For beekeepers operating within the bird’s breeding or wintering range, the practical impact tends to track colony proximity and timing rather than being a constant background loss. Because bee-eaters nest in dense colonies and forage socially, an apiary situated near an active bee-eater nesting bank during breeding season can see a real, locally concentrated increase in forager losses for the weeks that colony is active and provisioning chicks — a pattern documented in field research on the species’ effect on honeybee colonies in Egypt’s Toshka region, where researchers found brood and stored-pollen area in Carniolan and Italian honeybee colonies dropped as bee-eater counts peaked at an average of roughly 37 birds in May.
A 2016 Spanish field study put a real number on that worry and came back with a reassuring answer: researchers estimated that a single bee-eater consumes on the order of 1,333 honeybees over its entire stay in a region — a large-sounding total that is still far below the 36,000 to 45,000 bees a single healthy colony can regenerate in one month during the spring buildup, leading the study’s authors to conclude that under normal conditions, bee-eater predation on nearby apiaries is negligible.
This sits alongside the wider set of predators and stressors already covered in this site’s broader look at honeybee predators and threats, and, like most of those pressures, it’s rarely the sole or even primary driver of colony decline on its own — it’s one input among several, worth recognizing rather than either ignoring or overreacting to.
An Unexpected Upside: Yellow-Legged Hornet Predation
A genuinely new data point emerged from a 2023 field study by researchers at Portugal’s National Institute for Agrarian and Veterinary Research (INIAV), published in the journal Animals, which documented the first recorded evidence of European bee-eaters preying on the invasive yellow-legged hornet (Vespa velutina) — a hornet that has been aggressively expanding across Europe and preying heavily on honeybee colonies in its own right, a threat this site covers in depth in its guide to the Asian giant hornet’s smaller, more established relative. Researchers examined prey remains collected during the 2021 breeding season and recovered parts of five yellow-legged hornets across four separate bee-eater nesting sites in central Portugal.
The study’s authors were careful to frame the finding as preliminary rather than conclusive, noting that only a first identification pass on the 2021 prey remains had been completed and that the two species’ ranges currently overlap only in limited parts of the Iberian Peninsula — but they also pointed out that across the wider expanse of Europe the hornet is expected to keep spreading into areas where bee-eaters are already common, which is where any real biocontrol contribution would actually show up.
Still, it raises a real, if unproven, possibility: in regions where the two species’ ranges genuinely converge, a bird beekeepers have historically regarded purely as a nuisance predator might end up providing a small, incidental biocontrol benefit against one of the more serious hornet threats to European apiaries.
The video above shows European bee-eaters hunting on the wing at dusk, the same aerial sallying-and-return technique described in the sections above.
What the Research Actually Says: Study by Study
Because claims about bee-eaters and beekeeping range from casual anecdote to peer-reviewed fieldwork, it’s worth lining up what each specific study actually measured rather than treating “bee-eaters eat bees” as one undifferentiated fact:
| Study | Location | What was measured | Key finding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Costa, Hahn & Alves (2024) | Iberian Peninsula, 5 habitats | Adult & chick diet composition | Honeybees ~37% of adult diet; Hymenoptera share ranged 42-96% by habitat |
| Farinós-Celdrán et al. (2016) | Murcia, SE Spain | Honeybee consumption vs. colony regeneration capacity | ~1,333 honeybees eaten per bird per stay, vs. 36,000-45,000/month a colony can replace — called “negligible” under normal conditions |
| Omran et al. (2018) | Toshka, Egypt | Bee-eater counts vs. brood/pollen area | Brood and stored-pollen area declined as bee-eater counts peaked (~37 birds counted in May) |
| Onofre et al. (2023) | Central Portugal | Yellow-legged hornet remains in bee-eater diet | 5 hornet specimens found across 4 nesting sites (2021 season) — first such record |
Sources: Costa, Hahn & Alves, Avian Research (2024); Farinós-Celdrán et al., Journal of Apicultural Research (2016); Omran et al., Archives of Agriculture and Environmental Science (2018); Onofre et al., Animals (2023).
Frequently Asked Questions
Do bee-eater birds actually eat mostly honeybees?
Honeybees are a major but not exclusive part of the diet — a 2024 study across five Iberian habitats found honeybees made up an estimated 37% of adult diet on average, with the wider Hymenoptera group (bees, wasps, ants) ranging from 42% to 96% depending on local habitat and prey availability.
How does a bee-eater avoid being stung?
After catching an insect in flight, the bird returns to a perch and repeatedly strikes the prey against the branch, a behavior that disables the stinger before the bird swallows its catch.
Where do European bee-eaters live?
They breed across southern Europe, North Africa, and parts of western Asia, with most populations migrating to winter in sub-Saharan Africa; a separate resident population also breeds in southern Africa.
Should beekeepers try to control or deter bee-eaters?
The European bee-eater is classified as Least Concern by the IUCN via BirdLife International’s species factsheet and receives general protection as a wild bird species under the EU Birds Directive, and research suggests their impact on a colony is generally localized, seasonal, and often negligible rather than a leading cause of colony loss — so most guidance focuses on apiary siting and timing awareness rather than deterrence or control.
Do bee-eaters help against other beekeeping pests?
Possibly, in a limited way — a 2023 study by Portuguese researchers documented bee-eaters preying on the invasive yellow-legged hornet, though the authors describe the evidence as preliminary and the two species’ ranges currently overlap only in parts of the Iberian Peninsula.
How many honeybees does a bee-eater actually eat?
A 2016 Spanish study estimated an individual bee-eater consumes around 1,333 honeybees over its full stay in a region — a real number, but one the researchers found to be far below what a single healthy colony can regenerate in a single month.
