The bee, held annually from 1989 to 2019, was open to students in the fourth through eighth grades in participating schools from the United States.

[2] The entities represented at the national level came from all fifty U.S. states, all the territories, the Department of Defense Dependents Schools (DoDDS), and the District of Columbia.

[4] The National Geographic Society later announced that the Bee had been "permanently discontinue[d]... to make way for new, transformative, and innovative geography education opportunities in which students around the globe can more equitably participate.

The fifteen with seven points moved into the semi-final round where the top four were determined to fill the remainder of the seats in the finals.

Everyone revealed their answer at the end of the twelve seconds and players were eliminated on a single-elimination basis.

The other five who got the question wrong continued with the single-elimination procedure to determine which competitor would take the last open seat in the finals.

Each of the ten finalists started with a clean slate and was eliminated after the second incorrect answer.

Question examples included pictures of state quarters with the name rubbed off and maps of the US with national forests shown and numbered.

At the national level, competitions could include items such as flags, musical instruments, hats, and even live animals.

For example, if four players are left and three made their second mistake, the fourth advances to the championship round and the other three enter the tiebreaker.

The moderator asked both contestants the same question at the same time, repeated twice, and both players had fifteen seconds to write their answer.

In 2010, National Geographic partnered with mobile development company Concentric Sky to launch a series of official app-based study tools titled Geobee Challenge.

All the state bees are held on the same date, at the same time (in early April or late March) at all locations.

State bees originally occurred for the fifty states, five U.S. territories (Guam, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands), Washington, D.C., and the Department of Defense Dependent Schools (DoDDS), for a total of 57.

But from 2017 onwards, this was reverted back to the Galápagos Islands which the National Champion Pranay Varada received.

Originally, it was the same format, but in 2012, National Geographic changed the format so that answers were displayed on a blue screen, correct answers were worth points, and competitors could earn extra points with bonus questions, with eliminations being every few rounds.

In 2019, however, due to the introduction of a new competition that is called the GeoChallenge (which is about developing a collaborative team project to tackle a given issue) they once again changed the format of the Bee.

Afterwards, the lowest scoring contestant is eliminated, and a normal championship round occurs to determine the champion.

The 2015 National Geographic World Championship, originally planned to take place in Stockholm, Sweden, was canceled, and the competition since has been put on hiatus.

argue that the selection process of the National Geographic GeoBee competition is not well designed to reliably promote the most qualified contestants, as it leaves significant room for chance.

The fact that a single mistake is not a reliable indicator for a contestant's incompetence was demonstrated during the 2014 National competition.

The 10th spot was filled by tie breaker rounds between contestants who made a single mistake during the preliminaries and went to the Virginia champion Akhil Rekulapelli, who then went on to win the finals.

This was demonstrated in 2019, where more than half the total points in the semifinal and final rounds were based on these open ended GeoChallenge questions.

First Nebraska championHad a perfect score in the finalsWon the Bee on his first attempt at the school, state, and national level.

[10] Argentina Final Question: If completed, the proposed Grand Inga Dam would become the world's largest hydropower plant.