Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The western honey bee or European honey bee (Apis mellifera) is the most common of the 7–12 species of honey bees worldwide. [3] [4] The genus name Apis is Latin for 'bee', and mellifera is the Latin for 'honey-bearing' or 'honey-carrying', referring to the species' production of honey.
No crops originating in the New World depend on the western honey bee (Apis mellifera) at all, as the bee is an invasive species brought over with colonists in the last few centuries. [48] Tomatoes, peppers, squash, and all other New World crops evolved with native pollinators such as squash bees, bumble bees, and other native bees.
The Apis mellifera mellifera (commonly known as the European dark bee) is a subspecies of the western honey bee, evolving in central Asia, with a proposed origin of the Tien Shan Mountains [3] and later migrating into eastern and then northern Europe after the last ice age from 9,000BC onwards.
The Italian honey bee is endemic to the continental part of Italy, south of the Alps, and north of Sicily, where it survived the last ice age. [1] On Sicily the subspecies is Apis mellifera siciliana.
Apis mellifera intermissa, classified by von Buttel-Reepen, 1906 (the Tellian honey bee) found in the north western coast of Africa from Tunisia, along Libya and westerly into Morocco (north of the Atlas Mountains. [1] Apis mellifera jemenitica, classified by Ruttner, 1976 (the Arabian honey bee) found in Somalia, Uganda, Sudan and Yemen. [1]
The Maltese honey bee, Apis mellifera ruttneri, is a subspecies of the western honey bee, endemic to the Maltese islands which are situated in the Mediterranean Sea. [1] It is also the national insect of Malta.
The East African lowland honey bee (Apis mellifera scutellata) is a subspecies of the western honey bee. It is native to central, southern and eastern Africa, though at the southern extreme it is replaced by the Cape honey bee ( Apis mellifera capensis ). [ 1 ]
Apis cerana, the eastern honey bee, Asiatic honey bee or Asian honey bee, is a species of honey bee native to South, Southeast and East Asia. This species is the sister species of Apis koschevnikovi and both are in the same subgenus as the western (European) honey bee, Apis mellifera .