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Honey bee

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Insects, Reptiles and
Fish

                iHoney bees
         Scientific classification

   Kingdom: Animalia
   Phylum:  Arthropoda
   Class:   Insecta
   Order:   Hymenoptera
   Family:  Apidae
   Tribe:   Apini
   Genus:   Apis

                                   Species

   Apis andreniformis
   Apis cerana, or eastern honey bee
   Apis dorsata, or giant honey bee
   Apis florea, or dwarf honey bee
   Apis koschevnikovi
   Apis mellifera, or western honey bee
   Apis nigrocincta
   Bee collecting pollen.
   Enlarge
   Bee collecting pollen.
   Apis cerana have formed a ball around two hornets. Their body heat
   being trapped in the tight ball they have formed will kill the hornets
   by overheating them.
   Enlarge
   Apis cerana have formed a ball around two hornets. Their body heat
   being trapped in the tight ball they have formed will kill the hornets
   by overheating them.

   Honey bees (or honeybees) are a subset of bees which represent a far
   smaller fraction of bee diversity than most people suspect; of the
   approximately 20,000 known species of bees, there are only seven
   presently-recognized species with a total of 44 subspecies (Engel,
   1999; historically, anywhere from six to eleven species have been
   recognized). These bees are the only living members of the tribe Apini,
   all in the genus Apis, and all of which produce and store liquified
   sugar ("honey") to some degree, and construct colonial nests out of wax
   secreted by the workers in the colony. Other types of related bee
   produce and store honey, but only members of the genus Apis are
   considered true honey bees.

Origin and distribution of the genus Apis

   Honey bees as a group appear to have their centre of origin in
   Southeast Asia (including the Philippines), as all but one of the
   extant species are native to that region, including the most primitive
   living species ( Apis florea and A. andreniformis). The first Apis bees
   appear in the fossil record in deposits dating about 35 million years
   ago during the Oligocene period; that these fossils are from Europe
   does not necessarily indicate that Europe is where the genus
   originated, as the likelihood of fossils being found in Southeast Asia
   is very small, even if that is the true origin. The ancestors and close
   relatives of modern honey bees were all already social and so social
   behaviour predates the origin of the genus. Among the extant members of
   the genus, the more ancient species make single, exposed combs, while
   the more recently-evolved species nest in cavities and have multiple
   combs, which has greatly facilitated their domestication.

   Most species have historically been cultured or at least exploited for
   honey and beeswax by humans indigenous to their native ranges. Only two
   of these species have been domesticated, one ( Apis mellifera) at least
   since the time of the building of the Egyptian pyramids, and only that
   species has been moved extensively beyond its native range.

Common Species

Common (or European)

   Apis mellifera, the most commonly domesticated species, is the third
   insect to have its genome mapped. It originated in Tropical Africa and
   spread from there to Northern Europe and East into Asia. It is also
   called the Western honey bee. There are many sub-species that have
   adapted to the environment of their geographic and climatic area.
   Behavior, colour and anatomy can be quite different from one
   sub-species or race to another. In 1622, first European colonists
   brought the sub-species Apis mellifera mellifera to the Americas. Many
   of the crops that depend on honey bees for pollination have also been
   imported since colonial times. Escaped swarms (known as wild bees, but
   actually feral) spread rapidly as far as the Great Plains, usually
   preceding the colonists. The Native Americans called the honey bee "the
   white man's fly". Honey bees did not naturally cross the Rocky
   Mountains; they were carried by ship to California in the early 1850s.
   The so-called " killer bee" is a strain of this species, with ancestral
   stock of African origin (thus often called "Africanized").

Dwarf and Eastern

     * Apis florea and Apis cerana are small honey bees of southern and
       southeastern Asia. The former makes very small, exposed nests in
       trees and shrubs, while the latter makes nests in cavities and is
       sometimes managed in hives in a similar fashion to Apis mellifera,
       though on a much smaller and regionalized scale. Their stings are
       often not capable of penetrating human skin, so the hive and swarms
       can be handled with minimal protection.

Giant

     * Apis dorsata, the giant honey bee, is native to south and
       southeastern Asia, and usually makes its exposed combs on high tree
       limbs, or on cliffs, and sometimes on buildings. It is wild and can
       be very fierce. It is robbed of its honey periodically by human
       honey gatherers, a practice known as honey hunting. Its colonies
       are easily capable of stinging a human being to death when
       provoked.

Beekeeping

   Queen (The yellow dot on the thorax was added by a beekeeper to aid in
   finding the queen. She was probably born in 1997 or 2002; see the Queen
   article for an explanation of the dot color conventions.)
   Queen (The yellow dot on the thorax was added by a beekeeper to aid in
   finding the queen. She was probably born in 1997 or 2002; see the Queen
   article for an explanation of the dot colour conventions.)

   Two species of honey bee, A. mellifera and A. cerana, are often
   maintained, fed, and transported by beekeepers. Modern hives also
   enable beekeepers to transport bees, moving from field to field as the
   crop needs pollinating and allowing the beekeeper to charge for the
   pollination services they provide, revising the historical role of the
   self-employed beekeeper, and favoring large-scale commercial
   operations. For further information see the main article, or the
   articles for these species.

Life cycle

   A honeybee swarm.
   Enlarge
   A honeybee swarm.

   Like other eusocial bees, a colony generally contains one breeding
   female, or " queen"; seasonally up to a few thousand males, or "
   drones"; and a large seasonally variable population of sterile female
   workers. Many minor details vary among the different species of
   honeybees, though there are some common features. Eggs are laid singly
   in a cell in a wax honeycomb, produced and shaped by the workers.
   Larvae are initially fed with royal jelly produced by worker bees,
   later switching to honey and pollen. The exception is a larva fed
   solely on royal jelly, which will develop into a queen bee. The larva
   undergoes several moltings before spinning a cocoon within the cell,
   and pupating.

   Young worker bees clean the hive and feed the larvae. After this, they
   begin building comb cells. They progress to other within-colony tasks
   as they become older, such as receiving nectar and pollen from
   foragers. Later still, a worker leaves the hive and typically spends
   the remainder of its life as a forager.

   Workers cooperate to find food and use a pattern of "dancing" (known as
   the bee dance or waggle dance) to communicate with each other; this
   dance varies from species to species, but all living species of Apis
   exhibit some form of the behaviour.

   Virgin queens go on mating flights away from their home colony, and
   mate with multiple drones before returning. The drones die in the act
   of mating.

   Colonies are established not by solitary queens, as in most bees, but
   by groups known as " swarms" which consist of a mated queen and a large
   contingent of workers. This group moves en masse to a nest site that
   has been scouted by workers beforehand, and once they arrive they
   immediately construct a new comb and begin to raise a new worker brood.
   This type of nest founding is not seen in any other living bee genus,
   though there are several groups of Vespid wasps which also found new
   nests via swarming (sometimes including multiple queens). Also,
   stingless bees will start new nests with large numbers of workers, but
   the nest is constructed before a queen is escorted to the site, which
   is not a true "swarm".

Products

Pollination

   Honey Bee collecting nectar from small flowers. Location: McKinney,
   Texas.
   Enlarge
   Honey Bee collecting nectar from small flowers. Location: McKinney,
   Texas.

   Species of Apis are generalist floral visitors, and will pollinate a
   large variety of plants, but by no means all plants. Of all the
   honeybee species, only Apis mellifera has been used extensively for
   commercial pollination of crops and other plants. The value of these
   pollination services is commonly measured in the billions of dollars.

Honey

   Honey is the complex substance made when the nectar and sweet deposits
   from plants and trees are gathered, modified and stored in the
   honeycomb by honey bees. All living species of Apis have had their
   honey gathered by indigenous peoples for consumption, though for
   commercial purposes only A. mellifera and A. cerana have been exploited
   to any degree. Honey is sometimes also gathered by humans from the
   nests of various Stingless bees.

Beeswax

   Worker bees of a certain age will secrete beeswax from a series of
   glands on their abdomen. They use the wax to form the walls and caps of
   the comb. As with honey, most indigenous peoples will gather beeswax
   for various purposes.

Pollen

   Bees collect pollen in the pollen basket and carry it back to the hive.
   In the hive, pollen is used as a protein source necessary during
   brood-rearing. In certain environments, excess pollen can be collected
   from the hives of A. mellifera and A. cerana. It is often eaten as a
   health supplement.

Propolis

   Propolis (or bee glue) is created from resins, balsams and tree saps.
   Those species of honey bees which nest in tree cavities use propolis to
   seal cracks in the hive. Propolis is also used in some cosmetics.

Defense

   All honey bees live in colonies where the workers will sting intruders
   as a form of defense, and release pheromones that accentuate the attack
   response. The different species of honey bees are distinguished from
   all other bee species by the possession of small barbs on the sting,
   but these barbs are found only in the workers. The sting and associated
   venom sac are also modified so as to pull free of the body once lodged
   ( autotomy), and the sting apparatus has its own musculature and
   ganglion which allow it to keep delivering venom once detached. It is
   presumed that this complex apparatus, including the barbs on the sting,
   evolved specifically in response to predation by vertebrates, as the
   barbs do not function (and the sting apparatus does not detach) unless
   the sting is embedded in fleshy tissue.

Communication

   Honey bees are known to communicate through many different chemicals
   and odours, as is common in insects, but also using specific behaviors
   that convey information about the quality and type of resources in the
   environment, and where these resources are located. The details of the
   signalling being used vary from species to species; for example, the
   two smallest species, Apis andreniformis and Apis florea, dance on the
   upper surface of the comb, which is horizontal (not vertical, as in
   other species), and workers orient the dance in the actual compass
   direction of the resource to which they are recruiting.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_bee"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
