Honey bees (or honeybees) are a division of bees, predominantly distinguished by the making and storing of honey and the construction of perennial, colonial nests out of wax. Bees that produce honey represent no more than a small fraction of the more or less 20,000 known species of bees. Certain other species of related bees create and warehouse honey, but only members of the group Apis are genuine honey bees.

Most species have historically been cultured or at least exploited for honey and beeswax by humans native to their resident habitats. Just two of these kinds have been truly domesticated, one (Apis mellifera) at least since the time of the building of the Egyptian pyramids, and only that type has been moved widely beyond its native range.

Worker Bee Facts and Queen Bee Facts

Honey bees have distinct life cycle patterns than other kinds of bees. Eggs are laid one at a time inside a compartment inside a wax honeycomb, formed and produced by the worker bees. Larvae are initially fed with royal jelly made by worker bees, later switching to honey and pollen. The only one that is not is a larva fed exclusively on royal jelly, which will develop into a queen bee. The larva undergoes more than a few moltings before spinning a cocoon within the cell, and pupating. Drones emerge from unfertilized eggs, females (Queens and worker bees) emerge from fertilized eggs. The queen actually can select to fertilize the egg she is laying, often depending on what cell she is laying inside.

Immature worker bees cleanse the hive and give food to the larvae. After their royal jelly producing glands start to degenerate, they start on constructing comb cells. They progress to additional within-colony responsibilities as they become older, such as receiving nectar and pollen from foragers, and watching over the hive. Later still, a worker takes her initial orientation flights and finally leaves the hive and typically lives the rest of her life as a forager.

Worker bees cooperate to find food and use a pattern of "dancing" (identified as the bee dance or waggle dance) to share information regarding resources with the other bees; this dance is different from species to species, but all living types of Honey Bees display some form of the dance. If the resources are extremely local to the hive, they may also exhibit a less specific behavior generally identified as the "Round Dance".

Apis bees also carry out tremble dances which conscript receiver bees to collect nectar from returning foragers .

Virgin queens depart on mating flights away from their home-based colony, and breed with many drones before returning. The drones expire in the action of mating.

Facts About Bees Swarming

Colonies are founded not by lone queens, as in most bees, but by large groups known as "swarms", that include a mated queen and a large contingent of worker bees. This group travels en masse to a nest location which has been scouted by worker bees in advance. When they arrive, they directly assemble a new wax comb and begin to raise fresh worker brood. This kind of nest beginning is not seen in any other living bee type, though there are several groups of Vespid wasps which also initiate new nests by the use of swarming (occasionally including several queens). In addition, stingless bees will start different nests with large numbers of worker bees, but the nest is constructed before a queen is brought to the site, and this worker force is not a real "swarm".

Two types of honey bee, A. mellifera and A. cerana, are often maintained, fed, and moved by beekeepers. Current hives also enable beekeepers to transport bees, moving from meadow to meadow as the crop needs pollinating and allowing the beekeeper to charge for the pollination services they make available, revising the past role of the self-employed beekeeper, and favoring large-scale commercial companies. Recently, though, small scale beekeepers have been gaining in popularity.