European honey bee
The European honey bee or western honey bee (Apis mellifera) is the main species of honey bee. The genus Apis is Latin for "bee", and mellifera comes from Greek melli- meaning "honey" and ferre "to bear". So, the scientific name means "honey-bearing bee". In 1758 Carolus Linnaeus named the bees as Apis mellifera. However, he later found out that bees do not bear honey, but they actually bear nectar. Because of this, he tried to change it to Apis mellifica ("honey-making bee") later.
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| Honey bee foraging on African Oil Palm flowers | |
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| Apis mellifera Linnaeus, 1758
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Workers do a waggle dance in the beehive to tell the others where they have found nectar; Karl von Frisch discovered this.
European Honey Bee Media
A bee swarm. Bees are unaggressive in this state, since they have no hive to protect.
Larvae (left) and eggs (right)
Western honey bee on a lavender blossom
Peanut-like queen brood cells extend outward from the brood comb
Development of a drone pupa
Pupae of honeybee drones in opened cells at both sides of a honeycomb. The drones at the right side are some days older and more developed.
- ApismelliferaLucViatour
A large honey bee swarm on a fallen tree trunk
Bee hieroglyph from the tomb complex of Senusret I (d. 1,926 BC)
Western honey bee in a park in Tokyo
Video of western honey bee collecting pollen from blue crocuses
Other websites
- Flight of Honey Bee finally understood Archived 2008-05-16 at the Wayback Machine
- Honey Bee Pheromones[dead link]
- Cornwall Honey Beepedia
- BeeSource
- Honey Bee Apis mellifera diagnostic pictures, descriptions, natural history
- Brother Adams On-line book
- Beekeeping explained by the Food and Agriculture Organization
- Types of hives by FAO[dead link]
- Interactive 3D flash presentation of Honey beehive Archived 2008-10-14 at the Wayback Machine from PBS
- Brainy Bees Think Abstractly
- Digital library of Beekeeping Archived 2007-09-07 at the Wayback Machine
- Anatomy of the honeybee by the FAO
- Apis mellifera pomonella, a new honey bee subspecies from Central Asia; Apidologie 34 (2003) 367-375; Sheppard and Meixner[dead link]
- Origin of honeybees from the Yucatan peninsula inferred from mitochondrial DNA analysis; Molecular Ecology (2001)10, 1347-1355 Archived 2003-12-29 at the Wayback Machine
- Cyclopedia of American Agriculture Archived 2009-05-02 at the Wayback Machine ed. by L. H. Bailey (1911), Vol. III—Animals, "Bees," including a history of the literature related to European honey bees in the United States.
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Wikispecies has information on: Apis mellifera. |