honeybee

honeybee, (tribe Apini), any of a small group of social bees that make honey. The tribe comprises a single genus —Apis—of which there are seven species. The term honeybee is commonly applied to a single species, Apis mellifera, the familiar and economically important western honeybee.

All honeybees are eusocial insects and live together in cooperative nests or hives. The honeybee is remarkable for the dancing movements it performs in the hive to communicate information to its fellow bees about the location, distance, size, and quality of a particular food source in the surrounding area.

The following sections provide an overview of the different honeybee species, honeybee biology, and diseases of honeybees. For more detailed information on honeybees, their colonies, and diseases, see the articles western honeybee, beekeeping, and colony collapse disorder.

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Apis species

With the exception of A. mellifera, all other Apis species are confined to parts of southern or southeastern Asia. A. florea, the dwarf honeybee, occurs in southern Asia, where it builds its nests in trees and shrubs. A. andreniformis, the black dwarf honeybee, is native to forested habitats of southeastern Asia. A. dorsata, the giant honeybee, also occurs in southeastern Asia and sometimes builds combs nearly three meters (more than nine feet) in diameter. A. cerana, the Eastern honeybee, is native to southern and southeastern Asia, where it has become domesticated in some areas. It is very closely related to A. koschevnikovi, or Koschevnikov’s bee, which is found only on Borneo and several other islands in Southeast Asia and on the Malay Peninsula. A. nigrocincta is native to Indonesia and Mindanao island in the Philippines. There are also a number of subspecies and strains of Apis.

A. mellifera is about 1.2 cm (about 0.5 inch) long, although size varies among the several strains of this species. The head and thorax, or midsection, are somewhat bristly and vary in color according to the strain. Two large compound eyes and three simple eyes, or ocelli, are located on top of the head. Keen eyesight is complemented by two sensitive odor-detecting antennae.

Africanized honeybees (Apis mellifera scutellata ×A. mellifera) are a hybrid honeybee that resulted from the accidental release of African honeybees into the Western Hemisphere in 1957 and their subsequent crossbreeding with local European honeybees. They are generally smaller and more defensive than their European counterparts.

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Honeybee sexes and castes

There are two honeybee sexes, male and female, and two female castes. The two female castes are known as workers, which are females that do not attain sexual maturity, and queens, females that are larger than the workers. The males, or drones, are larger than the workers and are present only in early summer. The workers and queens have stingers, whereas the drones are stingless.

Queen honeybees store sperm in a structure known as the spermatheca, which allows them to control the fertilization of their eggs. Thus queens can lay eggs that are either unfertilized or fertilized. Unfertilized eggs develop into drones, whereas fertilized eggs develop into females, which may be either workers or virgin queens. Eggs destined to become queens are deposited in queen cells, which are vertical cells in the honeycomb that are larger than normal. After hatching, the virgin queens are fed royal jelly, a substance produced by the salivary glands of the workers. When not fed a diet consisting solely of royal jelly, virgin queens will develop into workers. During the swarming season, in the presence of a weak queen or in the absence of a queen, workers may lay unfertilized eggs, which give rise to drones.

Life cycle

For all three forms of honeybees, eggs hatch in three days and then develop into larvae that are known as grubs. All grubs are fed royal jelly at first, but only the future queens are continued on the diet. When fully grown, the grubs transform into pupae. Queens emerge in 16 days, workers in about 21 days (on average), and drones in 24 days. After emerging, the queens fight among themselves until only one remains in the hive. The old queen and the majority of her workers typically have left the hive by the time the new queens emerge. The swarm, which typically reproduces during swarming, may form two or more new colonies at different nesting sites.

Polyandry

A queen will often mate with many drones, a mating behavior known as polyandry. Polyandry increases genetic diversity within a colony and thereby improves colony fitness and survival. Genetically diverse colonies have characteristics—such as increased population size, foraging activity, and food supplies—that favor the production of new queens and the formation of new colonies.

Hives

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The hive is a series of combs composed of two layers of six-sided cells made of wax produced and secreted by the workers. Food in the form of honey, plant nectar, and so-called bee bread, made from pollen, is stored in the cells. Honey, which the bees produce from the nectar of flowers, was virtually the only form of sugar readily available to humans until modern times. For this reason, honeybees have been domesticated by humans for centuries. The art of caring for and managing colonies of honeybees is known as beekeeping. Besides producing honey, honeybees play an important role in agriculture as pollinators of a wide variety of domesticated plants.

Diseases of honeybees

Honeybee colonies are susceptible to a variety of diseases and parasites. Examples of agents that have been particularly devastating for colonies in Europe and North America include the nonnative parasites Varroa destructor and Tropilaelaps clareae. Colony collapse disorder (CCD), which was first reported in 2006 in the United States, caused massive colony losses and presented significant challenges for crop pollination, a major service of the beekeeping industry in North America. The detection of CCD also heightened previous concerns about suspected declines in honeybee populations in the United States and elsewhere.