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Status: Secure colonial insect that is often maintained, fed, and transported by farmers. Honeybees are a subset of bees which fall into the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita. There are about 20,000 species of bees which exist all around the world. However there are only four types of Honeybees that are commonly recognized: Apis florea, Apis dorsata, Apis cerana, and Apis mellifera. They have been domesticated at least since the time of the building of the Egyptian pyramids.
Honeybees store honey (nectar) in their hives, which provides the energy for flight muscles and for heating during the winter period, and pollen which supplies protein for bee brood to grow. Through centuries of selective breeding, honeybees can produce far more honey than the colony needs. Beekeepers, also known as "apiarists", harvest the surplus honey.
Honeybees probably originated in Tropical Africa and spread from South Africa to Northern Europe and East into India and China. The first bees appear in the fossil record in deposits dating about 40 million years ago during the Eocene period. At about 30 million years before present they appear to have developed social behavior and structurally are virtually identical with modern bees.
Apis mellifera, the most commonly domesticated species, is native to Europe, Asia and Africa. They were brought to the Americas with the first colonists and are now distributed world-wide.
Apis mellifera was brought to Virginia in 1622, and numerous other occasions later. Many of the crops that depend on honeybees 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 honeybee "the white man's fly." Honeybees did not naturally cross the Rockies; they were carried by ship to California in the early 1850s.
Beekeepers often provide a place for the colony to live and to store honey in. There are three basic types of beehive: skeps, Langstroth hives and top-bar hives. The type of beehive used has a significant impact on the ability to keep the colony healthy and on the amount of wax and honey that the colony can produce.
Modern hives also enable beekeepers to transport bees, moving from field to field as the crop needs pollinating and allowing the beekeper to charge for the pollination services they provide.
In cold climates, some beekeepers have kept colonies alive (with varying success) by moving them indoors for winter. While this can protect the colonies from extremes of temperature and make winter care and feeding more convenient for the beekeeper, it can increase the risk of dysentery (see the Nosema section of diseases of the honeybee) and can create an excessive buildup of carbon dioxide from the respiration of the bees. Recently inside wintering has been refined by Canadian beekeepers who build large barns just for wintering bees. Automated ventilation systems assist in the control of carbon dioxide build-up.
Like other eusocial bees, a colony generally contains one breeding female, or "queen"; a few thousand males, or "drones"; and a large population of sterile female workers. The population of a healthy hive in mid-summer can average between 40,000 and 80,000 bees. The workers cooperate to find food and are widely believed to use a pattern of "dancing" (known as the waggledance) to communicate with each other.
Honeybees will sting when they perceive the hive to be threatened. A honeybee that is away from the hive foraging for nectar or pollen will rarely sting. A honeybee can sting only once. The stinger is a modified ovipositor. It has barbs which lodge in the skin. As the bee pulls away, the stinger rips loose from the bee's abdomen. During this process, the bee will release alarm pheromones along with the stinger. The bee dies soon after it releases the stinger. Upon the bee's release of alarm pheromones, it attracts other bees to the location in their defensive behaviors. The larger drone bees have no stingers at all. The queen bee has a smooth stinger and could sting multiple times, but the queen does not leave the hive under normal conditions. Her stinger is not for defense of the hive; she only uses it for dispatching rival queens. Queen breeders who handle multiple queens and have the queen odor on their hands sometimes are stung by a queen.
The honeybee's primary commercial value is as a pollinator of crops. As an example, in California, the pollination of almonds occurs early in the growing season, before local hives have built up their populations. Almond orchards require two hives per acre (2,000 m² per hive) for maximum yield and so the pollination is highly dependent upon the importation of hives from warmer climates.
Honeybees are also valued for honey which is used as a sweetener in many foods. Honey is actually sweeter than table sugar and has attractive chemical properties for baking. Honey has a distinctive flavor which leads some people to prefer it over sugar and other sweeteners.
While it is rare for any honey to be produced exclusively from one floral source, honey will take on the flavor of the dominant flower in the region. Orange blossom, tupelo, and sourwood are favored types in the US. Greece is famous for wild thyme honey and France for lavender and acacia honey.
Most commercially available honey is blended. Monofloral honeys are especially valuable on the market.
In addition to its use as a sweetener, all honey has antibacterial properties and can be used as burn and wound dressing. Manuka, a strong tasting monofloral honey from New Zealand, has been shown to have greatly increased antibacterial activity and has become widely marketed for this property.
In Europe and Turkey, honeydew is highly prized. Honeydew is unusual in that the honey is not made from the nectar of flowers but from the excess sugar secretions of aphids, most importantly the aphid Marchalina hellenica which feeds on the sap of the Turkish Pine. Honeydew in these regions has a strong piney taste and is thought to be of medicinal value. Bees collecting this resource have to be fed protein supplements, as honeydew lacks the protein-rich pollen accompaniment gathered from flowers.
In the hive, there are three major classifications of bees: 1 queen bee, up to about 200 drone bees, and about 20,000 worker bees. Worker bees are responsible for the major collection of honey. In the typical day, the worker bee will go out to collect nectar, store it in the crop, and fly back to the hive. As it leaves the flower, the bee will release nasnov pheromones. This allows many other bees to find their way to the site by smell. Honeybees also release nasnov pheromones at the entrance of the hive, which allows other worker bees to find their way back in faster and easier. Upon the bee's arrival, it will regurgitate the nectars from the crop into the wax pit. Nectar, as collected from a flower, has a high water content which combined with the natural yeasts in the nectar would cause it to ferment. The bees "fan" their wings inside the hive creating a through draught, which in turn, evaporates much of the water out of the nectar. When the water content is less than about 13%, the high suger concentration is sufficient to stifle fermentation. This highly concentrated sugery fluid is what we call honey. Beekeepers can remove this, and bottle it for consumption, safe in the knowledge that the product will have a long shelf life with no risk of fermentation. Mead, (a wine made from honey) relies on exactly the process stated above, to create the alcohol however the wild yeasts are normally removed by boiling, and specific wine-grade yeast is added to start the fermentation.
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. When honey is harvested, the wax can be gathered to be used in various wax products like candles and seals.
Bees collect pollen as a protein source necessary during brood-rearing. In certain environments, excess pollen can be collected from the hive. It is often eaten as a health supplement.
Propolis (or bee glue) is created from resins and tree saps. Honeybees use propolis to seal cracks in the hive. Propolis is also sold for its reported health benefits.
This is a popular honey product. Instead of processing, the honey is harvested still in the wax comb.
There are eleven species within the genus Apis, all of which produce and store honey to some degree. These are the three that have historically been cultured for or robbed of honey by humans:
In addition these non-Apis species of honeybees have been cultured or robbed for honey:
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