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Honey bee

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Honeybee
Conservation status
Template:StatusDomesticated
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Hymenoptera
Suborder: Apocrita
Family: Apidae
Subfamily: Apinae
Tribe: Apini
Genus: Apis
Species

A. mellifera — western honeybee
A. florea
A. dorsata
A. cerana — eastern honeybee
others (see text)

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 six to eleven species (depending on the authority) within the tribe Apini, all in the genus Apis, and all of which produce and store honey to some degree. Four species have historically been cultured for or robbed of honey by humans: Apis mellifera (Western honeybee), Apis florea (Dwarf honeybee/little bee), Apis cerana and Apis dorsata. Two of these species have been domesticated, one (Apis mellifera) at least since the time of the building of the Egyptian pyramids.

  • Apis florea and Apis cerana are small honeybees 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 cultured for honey in a similar fashion to Apis mellifera. Their stings are often not capable of penetrating human skin, so the hive and swarms can be handled with minimal protection.
  • Apis dorsata, the giant honeybee, 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.

Origin and distribution of the genus Apis

See movie of bee at work collecting pollen. Requires an Ogg Theora enabled player, such as VideoLAN.
Bee collecting pollen.

Honeybees as a group appear to have their center 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 40 million years ago during the Eocene 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. At about 30 million years before present they appear to have developed social behavior and structurally are virtually identical with modern honeybees. 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 greatly facilitated their domestication.

Apis mellifera, the most commonly domesticated species, probably originated in Tropical Africa and spread from there to Northern Europe and East into Asia. It is also called the Western honeybee. There are many sub-species that have adapted to the environment of their geographic and climatic area. Behavior, color 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 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 Rocky mountains; they were carried by ship to California in the early 1850s.

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 color)

The honeybee is a colonial insect that is often maintained, fed, and transported by beekeepers.

Honeybees collect nectar and store it as honey in their hives. Nectar and honey provide the energy for the bees' flight muscles and for heating the hive during the winter period. Honeybees also collect pollen which supplies protein for bee brood to grow. Centuries of selective breeding by humans has created honeybees that produce far more honey than the colony needs. Beekeepers, also known as "apiarists", harvest the honey.

Beekeepers often provide a place for the colony to live and to store honey in. There are seven basic types of beehive: skeps, Langstroth hives, top-bar hives, box hives, log gums, D.E. hives and miller hives. Most U.S. states require beekeepers to use movable frames to allow bee inspectors to check the brood for disease. This allows the Langstroth, top-bar and D.E. hives, but other types of hives require special permitting, such as for museum use. The type of beehive used significantly impacts colony health, and wax and honey production.

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.

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.

Honeybee life cycle

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 female workers mature from nurse bees to become foragers. The foragers die usually when their wings are worn out after approximately 500 miles of flight. Honeybee wings beat at a constant rate of 230 beats per second or 13,800 beats/minute.

The frequency of the wing beats was much higher than expected for an insect of this size. Honey bees make up for carrying heavier loads or for changes in air density by altering the amplitude of their wings and catching more air. This makes the wing muscles work harder, but it does not change the frequency of the wing beats. The science of bee flight remained an unsolved mystery until December of 2005. A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science details the work supervised by Michael Dickinson from Caltech.

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 bee dance or waggle dance) to communicate with each other.

Products of the honeybee

Pollination

Main article: Pollination management

Beehives set up for pollination

The honeybee's primary commercial value is as a pollinator of crops. Orchards and fields have grown larger; at the same time wild pollinators have dwindled. In several areas of the world the pollination shortage is compensated by migratory beekeeping, with beekeepers supplying the hives during the crop bloom and moving them after bloom is complete. In many higher latitude locations it is difficult or impossible to winter over enough bees, or at least to have them ready for early blooming plants, so much of the migration is seasonal, with many hives wintering in warmer climates and moving to follow the bloom to higher latitudes.

As an example, in California, the pollination of almonds occurs in February, 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.

Honey

Main article: 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. Honey is sometimes also gathered by humans from the nests of various Stingless bees.

Beeswax

Main article: 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. When honey is harvested, the wax can be gathered to be used in various wax products like candles and seals.

Pollen

Main article: 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 hive. It is often eaten as a health supplement.

Propolis

Main article: Propolis

Propolis (or bee glue) is created from resins, balsams and tree saps. Honeybees use propolis to seal cracks in the hive. Propolis is also sold for its reported health benefits. Holistic therapists often utilize propolis for the relief of many inflammations, viral diseases, ulcers, superficial burns or scalds, in conjunction with acupuncture, ayurveda or homeopathy. Propolis is also believed to promote heart health and reduce the chances of cataracts.

Hazards to honeybee survival

  • North American and European honeybee populations were severely depleted by varroa mite infestations in the early 1990s. Chemical treatments saved most commercial operations and improved cultural practices and bee breeds are starting to reduce the dependency on miticides (acaracides) by beekeepers. Feral bee populations were greatly reduced during this period but now are slowly recovering, mostly in areas of mild climate, owing to natural selection for varroa resistance and repopulation by resistant breeds.
  • Africanized bees have spread across the southern United States where they pose a small danger to humans, although they may make beekeeping (particularly hobby beekeeping) difficult and potentially dangerous.

Environmental problems

As an invasive species, feral honeybees have become a significant environmental problem in places where they are not native, including Australia. Imported bees may compete with and displace native bees and birds, and may also promote the reproduction of invasive plants that native pollinators do not visit. Also, unlike native bees, they do not properly extract or transfer pollen from plants with poricidal anthers (anthers that only release pollen through tiny apical pores), as this requires buzz pollination, a behavior which honeybees rarely exhibit. Gross and Mackay (1998) found that honeybees reduce fruiting in Melastoma affine (a plant with poricidal anthers) by robbing stigmas of previously-deposited pollen.

Honeybee predators

Insects

Spiders

Reptiles and amphibians

Birds

Mammals

Contrary to popular perception, bears and honey badgers are brood predators; honey is only of secondary interest.

Honeybee communication

See also: Bee learning and communication

A honeybee swarm.

Honey bees are an excellent animal to study with regards to behavior because they are abundant and familiar to most people. An animal that is disregarded every day has very specific behaviors that go unnoticed by the normal person. Karl von Frisch studied the behavior of honey bees with regards to communication and was awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine in 1973. Von Frisch noticed that honey bees communicate with the language of dance. Honey bees are able to direct other bees to food sources through the round dance and the waggle dance. The round dance tells the other foragers that food is within 50 meters of the hive, but it does not provide much information regarding direction. The waggle dance, which may be vertical or horizontal, provides more detail about both the distance and the direction of the located food source. It is also hypothesized that the bees rely on their olfactory sense to help locate the food source once the foragers are given directions from the dances.

Another signal for communication is the shaking signal, also known as the jerking dance, vibration dance, or vibration signal. It is a modulatory communication signal because it appears to manipulate the overall arousal or activity of behaviors. The shaking signal is most common in worker communication, but it is also evident in reproductive swarming. A worker bee vibrates its body dorsoventrally while holding another honey bee with its front legs. Jacobus Biesmeijer examined the incidence of shaking signals in a forager’s life and the conditions that led to its performance to investigate why the shaking signal is used in communication for food sources. Biesmeijer found that the experienced foragers executed 92.1% of the observed shaking signals. He also observed that 64% of the shaking signals were executed by experienced foragers after they had discovered a food source. About 71% of the shaking signal sessions occurred after the first five foraging success within one day. Then other communication signals, such as the waggle dance, were performed more often after the first five successes. Biesmeijer proved that most shakers are foragers and that the shaking signal is most often executed by foraging bees over pre-foraging bees. Beismeijer concluded that the shaking signal presents the overall message of transfer work for various activities or activity levels. Sometimes the signal serves to increase activity, when bees shake inactive bees. At other times, the signal serves as an inhibitory mechanism such as the shaking signal at the end of the day. However, the shaking signal is preferentially directed towards inactive bees. All three types of communication between honey bees are effective in their jobs with regards to foraging and task managing.

Trivia

  • Honeybees are one of the very few invertebrates in which sleep-like behavior, similar in many respects to mammalian sleep, is known to exist.
  • Honey, as well as propolis, has antibiotic properties.
  • Honeybees are one of the very few invertebrates that produce a sort of "milk" for their young, royal jelly, which is the only food the larvae will eat early in development.
  • Like other social insects, they have an advanced immune system.
  • They have specially modified hairs on their body that develop a static electricity charge to attract pollen grains to their bodies.
  • They have a well developed sense of time (circadian rhythm).
  • They navigate by using a combination of memory, visual landmarks, colors, the position of the sun, smell, polarized light and magnetic anomalies.
  • Their aging is controlled by a hormone which regulates the production of a protein called vitellogenin.
  • The honeybee was a prominent political symbol in the empire of Napoleon Bonaparte, representing the Bonapartist bureaucratic and political system.
  • Honeybees have a form of non-viable parthenogenesis. Although the workers are able to produce drones as offspring, the drones' main purpose is to mate with the queen. Should the queen die, the drones do not reproduce.

Designated state insect

See also

Honey bee types and characteristics
Bee castes
Life cycle
Subspecies, Breeds and Phenotypes
Cultivation
Equipment
Parasites and diseases
Lists
Beekeeping
by countries
Museums and insectariums

Sources

  • Biesmeijer, Jacobus. "The Occurrence and Context of the Shaking Signal in Honey Bees (Apis mellifera) Exploiting Natural Food Sources". Ethology. 2003.
  • Kak, Subhash C. "The Honey Bee Dance Language Controversy". The Mankind Quarterly. 2001.
  • Schneider, S. S., P. K. Visscher, Camazine, S. "Vibration Signal Behavior of Waggle-dancers in Swarms of the Honey Bee, Apis mellifera (Hymenoptera: Apidae). Ethology. 1998.
  • Gross, C. L., Mackay, D. "Honeybees reduce fitness in the pioneer shrub Melastoma affine (Melastomataceae)". Biological Conservation, November 1998.
  • "'Honey Bee - Study of Northern Virginia Ecology'". Retrieved 2006-01-01.

External links

A very beneficial site for beekeepers, with lists of bee and equipment suppliers, helpful articles, and an excellent discussion board.

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