Honey bee

Honey bees (Apis) are a genus of the true bee family (Apidae). Depending on the taxonomic view, the genus comprises seven to twelve state-forming species, most of which are native only to Asia.

For the world-wide beekeeping the western honey bee has the biggest meaning; in many Asian countries also the eastern honey bee originally occurring there is held in simple block hives or cavities of walls. These two species breed in the protection of caves and were thus able to spread very far out of the tropical regions into more temperate climatic zones, as a result of which regionally different subspecies have developed, especially in the case of the Western honey bee. A natural border of colonization is often formed by mountains or islands.

In addition, there are the wild species with free-hanging nests that are used on a modest scale for honey production, especially the giant honeybee and the dwarf honeybee - this is known as honey hunting.

Features

The genus includes small to moderately large species, with body lengths between 7 and 19 millimeters. They are relatively elongated in outline and moderately densely hairy, including the also hairy compound eyes. In workers, the mandibles bear neither teeth nor keels. As in queens, their claws are divided, with an arolium between them as an adhesive pad on smooth surfaces. The tibiae of the hind legs do not bear spurs, they are, like the first tarsal limb, expanded in females as a collecting device for pollen and form a basket (corbicula) (basket collector). Typical for the genus is especially one feature of the wing vein. The radial cell of the forewing is very elongate, about four times as long as its distance from the tip of the wing, its apex rounded. The wing-mark (pterostigma) is narrow and inconspicuous. The genitalia of males (called drones) are weakly sclerotized and simplified in structure, greatly enlarged is the endophallus located inside the aedeagus.

Fossil honeybees

Fossils attributed to the genus Apis are available from the Oligocene and Miocene of Europe, Asia and, surprisingly, North America, and thus outside the recent natural range of the genus. Some of the best finds are from the Randecker Maar fossil deposit. Numerous species have been described, mostly based on details of wing veining, including Apis henshawi Cockerell and Apis armbrusteri Zeuner, some of which closely resemble the recent Apis cerana and Apis mellifera in morphology. A possible explanation would be that at least in Europe only one species of the genus lived at a time, but it was morphologically quite variable. The fossil species of the genus are very similar to the recent species, so that it can be assumed that the genus remained morphologically almost unchanged over many millions of years.