Honey bee

Honey bee Temporal range: Oligocene–Recent PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N
Western honey bee on the bars of a horizontal top-bar hive
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Hymenoptera
Family:	Apidae
Clade:	Corbiculata
Tribe:	Apini Latreille, 1802
Genus:	Apis Linnaeus, 1758
Type species
Apis mellifera Linnaeus, 1758
Species
†Apis lithohermaea †Apis nearctica Subgenus Micrapis: Apis andreniformis Apis florea Subgenus Megapis: Apis dorsata Apis laboriosa Subgenus Apis: Apis cerana Apis koschevnikovi Apis mellifera Apis nigrocincta

A honey bee (also spelled honeybee) is a eusocial flying insect from the genus Apis of the largest bee family, Apidae.^[1] All honey bees are nectarivorous pollinators native to mainland Afro-Eurasia,^[2][3] but human migrations and colonizations to the New World since the Age of Discovery have been responsible for the introduction of multiple subspecies into South America (early 16th century), North America (early 17th century) and Australia (early 19th century), resulting in the current cosmopolitan distribution of honey bees in all continents except Antarctica.^[2]

Honey bees are known for their construction of perennial hexagonally celled nests made of secreted wax (i.e. beehives),^[4] their large colony sizes, and their routine regurgitation of digested carbohydrates as surplus food storage in the form of honey, the lattermost of which distinguishes their hives as a prized foraging target of many mellivorous animals including honey badgers, bears and human hunter-gatherers. Only 8 extant species of honey bees are recognized, with a total of 43 subspecies, though historically 7 to 11 species are recognized. Although honey bees represent only a small fraction of the roughly 20,000 known species of bees, they are the bee clade most familiar to humans and are also the most valuable beneficial insects to agriculture and horticulture.^[5]

The best-known honey bee species is the western honey bee (Apis mellifera), which was domesticated and farmed (i.e. beekeeping) for honey production and crop pollination. The only other domesticated species is the eastern honey bee (Apis cerana), which are raised in South, Southeast and East Asia. Only members of the genus Apis are true honey bees,^[6] but some other bee species also produce and store honey and have been kept by humans for that purpose, including the stingless bees belonging to the genus Melipona and the Indian stingless or dammar bee Tetragonula iridipennis. In addition to harvesting honey, modern humans also use beeswax in making candles, soap, lip balms and various cosmetics, as a lubricant and in mould-making using the lost wax process. Other honey bee secretions such as royal jelly and bee venom are used pharmaceutically, especially in alternative medicine.