Final answer:
Bees are primary consumers or 1st consumers in a food web as they feed directly on producers like flowering plants for nectar and pollen.
Step-by-step explanation:
Bees are essential pollinators that play a critical role in ecosystems by helping plants reproduce through pollination. When considering where to place bees in a food web, we must look at the different trophic levels. The first trophic level includes producers, such as plants and phytoplankton, which utilize photosynthesis to create food from sunlight. The second trophic level is made up of primary consumers, which are herbivores that eat the producers.
Bees get their food from flower plants, consuming nectar and pollen, which makes them primary consumers. Therefore, bees are 1st consumers in the context of a food web. They do not consume other herbivores or carnivores, so they do not fit into the categories of secondary or tertiary consumers.