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51-547: A honey bee (also spelled honeybee ) is a eusocial flying insect within the genus Apis of the bee clade , all native to mainland Afro-Eurasia . After bees spread naturally throughout Africa and Eurasia , humans became responsible for the current cosmopolitan distribution of honey bees, introducing multiple subspecies into South America (early 16th century ), North America (early 17th century), and Australia (early 19th century). Honey bees are known for their construction of perennial colonial nests from wax ,
102-687: A pest in some regions. However, these strains do not overwinter well, so they are not often found in the colder, more northern parts of North America. The original breeding experiment for which the East African lowland honey bees were brought to Brazil in the first place has continued (though not as originally intended). Novel hybrid strains of domestic and re-domesticated Africanized honey bees combine high resilience to tropical conditions and good yields. They are popular among beekeepers in Brazil. Tribe Apini Latreille Genus Apis Linnaeus ( sensu lato ) As in
153-920: A diverse combination of pollen and nectar. Pollen is the only natural protein source for honey bees. Adult worker honey bees consume 3.4–4.3 mg of pollen per day to meet a dry matter requirement of 66–74% protein. The rearing of one larva requires 125-187.5 mg pollen or 25–37.5 mg protein for proper development. Dietary proteins are broken down into amino acids, ten of which are considered essential to honey bees: methionine, tryptophan, arginine, lysine, histidine, phenylalanine, isoleucine, threonine, leucine, and valine. Of these amino acids, honey bees require highest concentrations of leucine, isoleucine, and valine, however elevated concentrations of arginine and lysine are required for brood rearing. In addition to these amino acids, some B vitamins including biotin, folic acid, nicotinamide, riboflavin, thiamine, pantothenate, and most importantly, pyridoxine are required to rear larvae. Pyridoxine
204-401: A few other types of eusocial bees, a colony generally contains one queen bee , a female; seasonally up to a few thousand drone bees , or males; and tens of thousands of female worker bees . Details vary among the different species of honey bees, but common features include: In cold climates, honey bees stop flying when the temperature drops below about 10 °C (50 °F) and crowd into
255-684: A given area means that the pollen they carry for any one species is often very diluted. As such, they can provide some pollination to many plants, but most plants have some native pollinator that is more effective at pollinating that species. When honey bees are present as an invasive species in an area, they compete for flowers with native pollinators, which can actually push out the native species. Western honey bees have been described as essential to human food production, leading to claims that without their pollination humanity would starve or die out. Apples, blueberries, and cherries, for example, are 90 percent dependent on honeybee pollination. Albert Einstein
306-407: A human being to death if provoked. Eastern Apis species include three or four species, including A. koschevnikovi , A. nigrocincta , and A. cerana . The genetics of the western honey bee ( A. mellifera ) are unclear. Koschevnikov's honey bee ( Apis koschevnikovi ) is often referred to in the literature as the "red bee of Sabah"; however, A. koschevnikovi
357-587: A single 14 million-year-old specimen from Nevada. The close relatives of modern honey bees – e.g., bumblebees and stingless bees – are also social to some degree, and social behavior is considered to be a trait that predates the origin of the genus. Among the extant members of Apis , the more basal species make single, exposed combs, while the more recently evolved species nest in cavities and have multiple combs, which has greatly facilitated their domestication. While about 20,000 species of bees exist, only eight species of honey bee are recognized, with
408-583: A total of 43 subspecies , although historically seven to 11 species are recognized: Apis andreniformis (the black dwarf honey bee); Apis cerana (the eastern honey bee); Apis dorsata (the giant honey bee); Apis florea (the red dwarf honey bee); Apis koschevnikovi (Koschevnikov's honey bee); Apis laboriosa (the Himalayan giant honey bee); Apis mellifera (the western honey bee); and Apis nigrocincta (the Philippine honey bee). Honey bees are
459-720: Is a kind or type of bee. It is incorrect to run the two words together, as in dragonfly or butterfly , which are appropriate because dragonflies and butterflies are not flies. Honey bee, not honeybee, is the listed common name in the Integrated Taxonomic Information System , the Entomological Society of America Common Names of Insects Database, and the Tree of Life Web Project . Honey bees appear to have their center of origin in South and Southeast Asia (including
510-617: Is commonly measured in the billions of dollars, credited with adding about 9% to the value of crops across the world. However, despite contributing substantially to crop pollination, there is debate about the potential spillover to natural landscapes and competition between managed honey bees and many of the ~20,000 species of wild pollinators. Species of Apis are generalist floral visitors, and pollinate many species of flowering plants, but because of their "generalized" nature, they often do so inefficiently. Without specialized adaptations for specific flowers, their ability to reach pollen and nectar
561-521: Is limited, foragers will collect water from streams or ponds to meet the needs of the hive. The only domesticated species of honey bee are A. mellifera and A. cerana , and they are often maintained, fed, and transported by beekeepers. In Japan, where A. mellifera is vulnerable to local hornets and disease, the Japanese honey bee A. cerana japonica is used in its place. Modern hives also enable beekeepers to transport bees, moving from field to field as
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#1732859544863612-400: Is often limited. This combined with their behavioural flexibility may be why they are the most commonly documented pollen thieves . Indeed, for plant species with more specialized pollinators, experiments show that increased honeybee visitation can actually reduce pollination, both where honey bees are non-native and even where they are native. What's more, their tendency to visit all species in
663-638: Is pale reddish in Sabah State , Borneo , Malaysia , but a dark, coppery colour in the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra , Indonesia . Its habitat is limited to the tropical evergreen forests of the Malay Peninsula , Borneo and Sumatra and they do not live in tropical evergreen rain forests which extend into Thailand , Myanmar , Cambodia and Vietnam . Apis nigrocincta is a cavity-nesting species. The species has rust-coloured scapes , legs, and clypeuses , with reddish-tan hair colour that covers most of
714-465: Is probably the product of a largely Early Pleistocene radiation aided by climate and habitat changes during the last ice age . That the western honey bee has been intensively managed by humans for many millennia – including hybridization and introductions – has apparently increased the speed of its evolution and confounded the DNA sequence data to a point where little of substance can be said about
765-670: Is sometimes misquoted as saying "If bees disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live" . Einstein did not say this and there is no science to support this prediction. Many important crops need no insect pollination at all. The ten most important crops, comprising 60% of all human food energy, fall into this category: plantains are sterile and propagated by cuttings, as are cassava ; potatoes , yams , and sweet potatoes are root vegetables propagated by tubers ; soybeans are self-pollinated ; and rice , wheat , sorghum , and maize , are wind-pollinated , as are most other grasses. No crops originating in
816-633: Is the most prevalent B vitamin found in royal jelly and concentrations vary throughout the foraging season with lowest concentrations found in May and highest concentrations found in July and August. Honey bees lacking dietary pyridoxine were unable to rear brood. Pollen is also a lipid source for honey bees ranging from 0.8% to 18.9%. Lipids are metabolized during the brood stage for precursors required for future biosynthesis. Fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K are not considered essential but have shown to significantly improve
867-522: The Late Miocene . This would fit the hypothesis that the ancestral stock of cave-nesting honey bees was separated into the western group of East Africa and the eastern group of tropical Asia by desertification in the Middle East and adjacent regions, which caused declines of food plants and trees that provided nest sites, eventually causing gene flow to cease. The diversity of A. mellifera subspecies
918-460: The New World depend on the western honey bee ( Apis mellifera ) at all, as the bee is an invasive species brought over with colonists in the last few centuries. Tomatoes , peppers , squash , and all other New World crops evolved with native pollinators such as squash bees , bumble bees , and other native bees. The stingless bees mentioned by Jefferson are distant relatives of the honey bees, in
969-611: The Philippines ), as all the extant species except Apis mellifera are native to that region. Notably, living representatives of the earliest lineages to diverge ( Apis florea and Apis andreniformis ) have their center of origin there. The first Apis bees appear in the fossil record at the Eocene – Oligocene boundary (34 mya ), in European deposits. The origin of these prehistoric honey bees does not necessarily indicate Europe as
1020-609: The Tian Shan range. It is variously called the European, western, or common honey bee in different parts of the world. Many subspecies have adapted to the local geographic and climatic environments; in addition, breeds such as the Buckfast bee have been bred. Behavior, colour, and anatomy can be quite different from one subspecies or even strain to another. A. mellifera phylogeny is the most enigmatic of all honey bee species. It seems to have diverged from its eastern relatives only during
1071-472: The University of Maryland and Auburn University published in 2023 found the number of United States honeybee colonies "remained relatively stable" although 48% of colonies were lost in the year that ended April 1, 2023, with a 12-year average annual mortality rate of 39.6%. The previous year (2021-2022) the loss was 39% and the 2020-2021 loss was 50.8%. Beekeepers told the surveying scientists that 21% loss over
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#17328595448631122-580: The stingless bees belonging to the genus Melipona and the Indian stingless or dammar bee Tetragonula iridipennis . Modern humans also use beeswax in making candles , soap , lip balms and various cosmetics , as a lubricant and in mould-making using the lost wax process . The genus name Apis is Latin for "bee". Although modern dictionaries may refer to Apis as either honey bee or honeybee, entomologist Robert Snodgrass asserts that correct usage requires two words, i.e., honey bee , because it
1173-485: The western honey bee as well as Apis cerana , are known to engage in effective methods of nest thermoregulation during periods of varying temperature in both summer and winter. During the summer, however, this is achieved through fanning and water evaporation from water collected in various fields. Of all the honey bee species, only A. mellifera has been used extensively for commercial pollination of fruit and vegetable crops. The scale of these pollination services
1224-595: The Philippines to satisfaction; some researchers argue that these are indeed distinct species, but that A. cerana as defined is still paraphyletic , consisting of several separate species, though other researchers argue cerana is a single monophyletic species. A. mellifera , the most common domesticated species, was first domesticated before 2600 BC and was the third insect to have its genome mapped. It seems to have originated in eastern tropical Africa and spread from there to Europe and eastwards into Asia to
1275-463: The United States, and a number of species of Bombus (bumblebees) for pollination in various regions globally, such as tomatoes , which are not effectively pollinated by honey bees. Primarily in places where western honey bees were imported by humans, periodic collapses in western honey bee populations have occurred at least since the late 19th century. However, as humans continued to manipulate
1326-532: The Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.151 via cp1112 cp1112, Varnish XID 393722205 Upstream caches: cp1112 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Fri, 29 Nov 2024 05:52:24 GMT Apis nearctica Apis nearctica is an extinct species of honey bee which existed in what is now Nevada during the Middle Miocene period. It
1377-504: The body. Apis cerana , the eastern honey bee proper, is the traditional honey bee of southern and eastern Asia. One of its subspecies, the Indian honey bee ( A. c. indica ), was domesticated and kept in hives in a fashion similar to A. mellifera , though on a more limited, regional scale. It has not been possible yet to resolve its relationship to the Bornean honey bee A. c. nuluensis and Apis nigrocincta from
1428-430: The bristles (setae) guarding the spiracles are firm enough to prevent the mites' entry into the tracheae. Mite infestations are known as acarine, and have been called "Isle of Wight disease". Larval stages of the moth Galleria mellonella parasitize both wild and cultivated honey bees, in particular Apis mellifera and Apis cerana . Eggs are laid within the hive, and the larvae that hatch tunnel through and destroy
1479-428: The central area of the hive to form a "winter cluster". The worker bees huddle around the queen bee at the center of the cluster, shivering to keep the center between 27 °C (81 °F) at the start of winter (during the broodless period) and 34 °C (93 °F) once the queen resumes laying. The worker bees rotate through the cluster from the outside to the inside so that no bee gets too cold. The outside edges of
1530-403: The cluster stay at about 8–9 °C (46–48 °F). The colder the weather is outside, the more compact the cluster becomes. During winter, they consume their stored honey to produce body heat. The amount of honey consumed during the winter is a function of winter length and severity, but ranges in temperate climates from 15 to 50 kilograms (33 to 110 lb). In addition, certain bees, including
1581-496: 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. Bees of various types other than honey bees are also domesticated and used for pollination or other means around the world, including Tetragonula iridipennis in India, the blue orchard bee for tree nut and fruit pollination in
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1632-571: The crops that depend on western honey bees for pollination have also been imported since colonial times. Escaped swarms (known as "wild" honey bees, but actually feral ) spread rapidly as far as the Great Plains , usually preceding the colonists. Honey bees did not naturally cross the Rocky Mountains ; they were transported by the Mormon pioneers to Utah in the late 1840s, and by ship to California in
1683-487: The early 1850s. Africanized honey bees (known colloquially as "killer bees") are hybrids between European stock and the East African lowland subspecies A. m. scutellata . They are often more aggressive than European honey bees and do not create as much of a honey surplus, but are more resistant to disease and are better foragers. Accidentally released from quarantine in Brazil , they have spread to North America and constitute
1734-608: The exact relationships of many A. mellifera subspecies. Apis mellifera is not native to the Americas , so it was not present when the European explorers and colonists arrived. However, other native bee species were kept and traded by indigenous peoples. In 1622, European colonists brought the German honey bee ( A. m. mellifera ) to the Americas first, followed later by the Italian honey bee ( A. m. ligustica ) and others. Many of
1785-473: The first decade of the 21st century, abnormally high die-offs (30–70% of hives) of western honey bee colonies have occurred in North America. This has been dubbed "colony collapse disorder" (CCD) and was at first unexplained. It seems to be caused by a combination of factors rather than a single pathogen or poison , possibly including neonicotinoid pesticides or Israeli acute paralysis virus . A survey by
1836-529: The genus Melipona . Still, honey bees are considered "crucial to the food supply, pollinating more than 100 of the crops we eat, including nuts, vegetables, berries, citrus and melons." The USDA reports "Three-fourths of the world’s flowering plants and about 35 percent of the world’s food crops depend on animal pollinators to reproduce" and honey bees "pollinate 80 percent of all flowering plants, including more than 130 types of fruits and vegetables." Honey bees obtain all of their nutritional requirements from
1887-464: The honeycombs that contain bee larva and their honey stores. The tunnels they create are lined with silk, which entangles and starves emerging bees. Destruction of honeycombs also result in honey leaking and being wasted. Both G. mellonella adults and larvae are possible vectors for pathogens that can infect bees, including the Israeli acute paralysis virus and the black queen cell virus . To manage
1938-406: The large size of their colonies, and surplus production and storage of honey , distinguishing their hives as a prized foraging target of many animals, including honey badgers , bears and human hunter-gatherers . Only 8 surviving species of honey bee are recognized, with a total of 43 subspecies , though historically 7 to 11 species are recognized. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of
1989-579: The mite population may increase to such an extent that the hive will succumb to the diseases and deformities caused by the mites. It was widely believed that the mites drank the blood of bees. However, a 2018 study Article in PNAS: "Linking pesticides and gut health in bees" showed that they actually feed on the fat body tissue of live bees, not the blood. Mite treatment is accomplished by several methods, including treatment strips and acid vaporization. Eusocial Too Many Requests If you report this error to
2040-423: The mite, temperature treatments are possible, but also distorts wax of the honeycombs. Chemical fumigants, particularly CO 2 , are also used. Varroa mites are arguably the biggest threat to honey bees in the United States. These mites invade hives and reproduce by laying eggs on pupa. The hatching mites eat away at the pupa, causing deformities as well as spreading disease. If not detected and treated early on,
2091-532: The most common circulating sugar in hemolymph is trehalose which is a disaccharide consisting of two glucose molecules. Adult worker honey bees require 4 mg of utilizable sugars per day and larvae require about 59.4 mg of carbohydrates for proper development. Honey bees require water to maintain osmotic homeostasis, prepare liquid brood food, and to cool the hive through evaporation. A colony's water needs can generally be met by nectar foraging as it has high water content. Occasionally on hot days or when nectar
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2142-465: The number of brood reared. Honey bees ingest phytosterols from pollen to produce 24-methylenecholesterol and other sterols as they cannot directly synthesize cholesterol from phytosterols. Nurse bees have the ability to selectively transfer sterols to larvae through brood food. Nectar is collected by foraging worker bees as a source of water and carbohydrates in the form of sucrose. The dominant monosaccharides in honey bee diets are fructose and glucose but
2193-501: The only extant members of the tribe Apini. Today's honey bees constitute three clades : Micrapis (the dwarf honey bees), Megapis (the giant honey bee), and Apis (the western honey bee and its close relatives). Most species have historically been cultured or at least exploited for honey and beeswax by humans indigenous to their native ranges. Only two species have been truly domesticated : Apis mellifera and Apis cerana . A. mellifera has been cultivated at least since
2244-612: The other lineages, but do not seem to have diverged from each other a long time before the Neogene . Apis florea have smaller wing spans than its sister species. Apis florea are also completely yellow with the exception of the scutellum of workers, which is black. Two species are recognized in the subgenus Megapis . They usually build single or a few exposed combs on high tree limbs, on cliffs, and sometimes on buildings. They can be very fierce. Periodically robbed of their honey by human "honey hunters", colonies are easily capable of stinging
2295-539: The place of origin of the genus, only that the bees were present in Europe by that time. Few fossil deposits are known from South Asia, the suspected region of honey bee origin, and fewer still have been thoroughly studied. No Apis species existed in the New World during human times before the introduction of A. mellifera by Europeans. Only one fossil species is documented from the New World, Apis nearctica , known from
2346-452: The result of allopatric speciation , their distribution later converging. Given that A. florea is more widely distributed and A. andreniformis is considerably more aggressive, honey is, if at all, usually harvested from the former only. They are the most ancient extant lineage of honey bees, maybe diverging in the Bartonian (some 40 million years ago or slightly later) from
2397-479: The roughly 20,000 known species of bees. The best known honey bee is the western honey bee , ( Apis mellifera ), which was domesticated for honey production and crop pollination . The only other domesticated bee is the eastern honey bee ( Apis cerana ), which occurs in South , Southeast , and East Asia . Only members of the genus Apis are true honey bees, but some other types of bees produce and store honey and have been kept by humans for that purpose, including
2448-561: The time of the building of the Egyptian pyramids , and only that species has been moved extensively beyond its native range. Apis florea and Apis andreniformis are small honey bees of southern and southeastern Asia. They make very small, exposed nests in trees and shrubs. Their stings are often incapable of penetrating human skin, so the hive and swarms can be handled with minimal protection. They occur largely sympatrically , though they are very distinct evolutionarily and are probably
2499-485: The western honey bee and deliberately transferred them on a global scale, diseases simultaneously spread and harmed managed colonies. Colony losses have occurred periodically throughout history. Fungus, mites, and starvation have all been thought to be the cause of the deaths. Limited occurrences resembling CCD were documented as early as 1869. Colony collapses were called "May Disease" in Colorado in 1891 and 1896. Starting in
2550-411: The winter is acceptable and more than three-fifths of beekeepers surveyed said their losses were higher than that in 2022-2023. Acarapis woodi (or "tracheal mites") are parasitic mites which live and reproduce in adult bees' tracheae, or respiratory tubes, piercing the tube walls with their mouthparts to feed on haemolymph. To infest new hosts, the mites must find newly emerged bees; after three days,
2601-466: Was discovered at Stewart Valley, Nevada, and described by Michael S. Engel , Ismael A. Hinojosa-Díaz, and Alexandr P. Rasnitsyn in 2009. The species belongs to the extinct armbrusteri species group, is most similar to the extinct species Apis armbrusteri from the Miocene of southwestern Germany, and both species may be related by geological range. This is the first and only known Apis species range in
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