Apis melifera
Insecta
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Species of Apis are generalist floral visitors, and will pollinate a large variety of plants, but by no means all plants. Two species of honey bee, A. mellifera and A. cerana, are often maintained, fed, and transported by beekeepers. Of all the honeybee species, only Apis mellifera has been used extensively for commercial pollination of crops and other plants. The value of these pollination services is commonly measured in the billions of dollars. Apis mellifera, known as Common (or European) bee, is the most commonly domesticated species, is the third insect to have its genome mapped. It originated in Tropical Africa and spread from there to Northern Europe and East into Asia. It is also called the Western honey bee. 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 honey bees 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 honey bee "the white man's fly". Honey bees did not naturally cross the Rocky Mountains; they were carried by ship to California in the early 1850s. The so-called "killer bee" is a strain of this species, with ancestral stock of African origin (thus often called "Africanized"). In early 2007, abnormally high die-offs (30-70% of hives) of Western honey bee colonies in the US were attributed to a condition dubbed "Colony Collapse Disorder". Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_bee Selection:
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Created: Saturday, October
19,
2002; Last updated:
Monday, June 18, 2007
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