Only Apis mellifera and Apis cerana nest in cavities with sufficient population to be easily managed for honey harvest. A. florea and others nest in cavities but not in large enough colonies to make regular tending and honey harvest practical. Apis cerana colonies are much smaller, perhaps one-quarter the size of Apis mellifera, so they yield a much smaller honey harvest per colony. Photo above is of an Apis cerana managed colony in the trunk of a coconut tree. photo by

Beekeepers like everything to bee about them.

Beauty, because beauty is in the eye of the bee-holder.

Photo: Cucurbits such as the cucumbers pictured above can produce 70% more when 'buzz pollinated' by bumble bees. See the difference in fruit set between the two cucumbers sliced open above. Many crops, particularly those crops such as blueberry, cranberry cucurbits and tomatoes are best pollinated by “buzz pollination,” which a number of solitary bees such as bumbles do, but not honey bees. The size and shape of bumble bodies plus buzz pollination causes them to be bet

A: Neigh buzz

Why are honey bees not useful for pollination in greenhouses, and what bees are? Honey bees would come out of their hive and fly up and away from the crops in the greenhouses to forage over an area of at least several square miles. Bumble bees naturally fly much lower and “bumble” around inside the greenhouse because they naturally forage a few hundred feet at most from the nest established by each queen. The photo is of a shipment of bumble bee queens in their nests fo

A USB

It changed its behavior in two major ways from the other Apis species that never moved out of the tropics. (1) it stored enough surplus honey to survive the winter dearth and (2) it developed an advanced clustering behavior to keep the queen alive through cold winters. Photo above is of Apis mellifera nestled in a rock cavity in Arizona building up its surplus honey stores. From World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting , Eva Crane.

A USB

In a honey box!

There are about 12 species in the genus Apis that produce harvestable honey, however only a few species produce a commericially adequate harvest. Apis mellifera is the largest honey producer and the only of those bee species to be cultivated outside Asia. The other Apis species all remain confined to Asia. The photo above from James C. Nieh of Researchgate, shows the 'out in the open', single-comb nest strategy of Apis dorsata. This works in the tropics, but confines this spe

Only one – Apis mellifera developed and refined eusociality to the level necessary to survive in the seasonally adverse conditions found in such areas as the northern temperate zone. Photo: hives in Maltby Apiary, SnoKing Beekeepers Association, Maltby, Washington, USA

A: The abdo-MEN

A: “The Thorax.” The best-known line from this chapter is “I am the thorax and I speak for the bees!”

Drones, which have no stingers, and worker bees that have stung a person, animal or object and their stingers have detached from their bodies. Those workers die soon after.

The bees use propolis to keep their nest water and draft proof by filling cracks, holes, gaps less than 6mm in width. They limit entrance size by filling the opening with propolis and often block any alternate entry openings. They also use propolis to seal or encapsulate anything they can not remove from a hive, be it mold, microbes, or small dead animals.

Rug-Bee.

A: The frogs keep croaking.

The workers forage to collect plant resins, bring it back to the hive and mix it with wax and possibly with their saliva. Conifers, maples, the poplar family, including our native cottonwoods, and other resinous plants., provide ample sources in Western Washington. Picture of propolis with uses inside the beehive taken from a review article in the journal Insects, "Propolis Counteracts Some Threats to Honey Bee Health" Michael Simone-Finstromet. al.

A: They only try for "Bs".