Honey Bee

A honey bee (also spelled honeybee) is a eusocial flying insect from the genus Apis of the largest bee family, Apidae. Honey bees are known for their construction of perennial nests within cavities (i.e. beehives) containing hexagonal cells made of secreted wax, 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. 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. 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, 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.