Honey Bee
Legacy Name: Honey Bee

Of the greater than 25,000 species of bees on Earth (Michener, 2000), only ~160 species in two genera (Trigona and Apis) produce honey. When someone says "Honey bee" they are referring to the genus Apis, which contains seven recognized species (Engel, 1999).

Apis mellifera, the European honey bee, has been domesticated by humans for thousands of years. Although native to the Middle East and India, honey bees have been been brought all over the world by humans desiring their sweet honeycomb. As bees were taken to the corners of the earth, so was their lore. Bees have been associated with royalty, renewal, purity, revival, sweetness, and many other traits. Only recently, however, have humans realized that honey bee colonies are controlled by queens, rather than kings. In 1609, Charles Butler wrote an expository book (The Feminine Monarchie), which explored the possibility that the majority of these tiny creatures humans had worked with for millennia were female.

Honey bee colonies have anywhere between 5,000 and 50,000 members, of which 90% or more are female. The queen is the only female who mates and lays eggs. The rest, undernourished as larvae, do not fully develop their reproductive systems. Males within a colony consume resources, briefly incubate the brood, and then fly off to find their fortune. Unlike recent movies would have you believe, male bees don't do much work for the hive.

Today Apis mellifera is the most economically important insect worldwide. Although honey is still produced, it is a byproduct of much more valuable pollination services--worth billions of dollars every year.

Engel, M.S. 1999. The taxonomy of recent and fossil honey bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Apis). Journal of Hymenoptera Research 8:165-196.

Michener, C.D.. 2000. The Bees of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press.