Western honey beeThe western honey bee or European honey bee (Apis mellifera) is the most common of the 7–12 species of honey bees worldwide. 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. Like all honey bee species, the western honey bee is eusocial, creating colonies with a single fertile female (or "queen"), many normally non-reproductive females or "workers", and a small proportion of fertile males or "drones".
BeekeepingBeekeeping (or apiculture) is the maintenance of bee colonies, commonly in man-made beehives. Honey bees in the genus Apis are the most commonly kept species but other honey producing bees such as Melipona stingless bees are also kept. Beekeepers (or apiarists) keep bees to collect honey and other products of the hive: beeswax, propolis, bee pollen, and royal jelly. Pollination of crops, raising queens, and production of package bees for sale are other sources of beekeeping income. Bee hives are kept in an apiary or "bee yard".
InsectInsects (from Latin insectum) are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes and one pair of antennae. Their blood is not totally contained in vessels; some circulates in an open cavity known as the haemocoel. Insects are the most diverse group of animals; they include more than a million described species and represent more than half of all known living organisms.
Africanized beeThe Africanized bee, also known as the Africanized honey bee and colloquially as the "killer bee", is a hybrid of the western honey bee (Apis mellifera), produced originally by crossbreeding of the East African lowland honey bee (A. m. scutellata) with various European honey bee subspecies such as the Italian honey bee (A. m. ligustica) and the Iberian honey bee (A. m. iberiensis). The East African lowland honey bee was first introduced to Brazil in 1956 in an effort to increase honey production, but 26 swarms escaped quarantine in 1957.
Stingless beeStingless bees, sometimes called stingless honey bees or simply meliponines, are a large group of bees (about 550 described species), comprising the tribe Meliponini (or subtribe Meliponina according to other authors). They belong in the family Apidae, and are closely related to common honey bees, carpenter bees, orchid bees, and bumblebees. Meliponines have stingers, but they are highly reduced and cannot be used for defense, though these bees exhibit other defensive behaviors and mechanisms.
Langstroth hiveIn modern American beekeeping, a Langstroth hive is any vertically modular beehive that has the key features of vertically hung frames, a bottom board with entrance for the bees, boxes containing frames for brood and honey (the lowest box for the queen to lay eggs, and boxes above where honey may be stored) and an inner cover and top cap to provide weather protection. In a Langstroth hive, the bees build honeycomb into frames, which can be moved with ease.
Queen beeA queen bee is typically an adult, mated female (gyne) that lives in a colony or hive of honey bees. With fully developed reproductive organs, the queen is usually the mother of most, if not all, of the bees in the beehive. Queens are developed from larvae selected by worker bees and specially fed in order to become sexually mature. There is normally only one adult, mated queen in a hive, in which case the bees will usually follow and fiercely protect her.
HoneyHoney is a sweet and viscous substance made by several bees, the best-known of which are honey bees. Honey is made and stored to nourish bee colonies. Bees produce honey by gathering and then refining the sugary secretions of plants (primarily floral nectar) or the secretions of other insects, like the honeydew of aphids. This refinement takes place both within individual bees, through regurgitation and enzymatic activity, and during storage in the hive, through water evaporation that concentrates the honey's sugars until it is thick and viscous.
BeehiveA beehive is an enclosed structure in which some honey bee species of the subgenus Apis live and raise their young. Though the word beehive is used to describe the nest of any bee colony, scientific and professional literature distinguishes nest from hive. Nest is used to discuss colonies that house themselves in natural or artificial cavities or are hanging and exposed. The term hive is used to describe an artificial/man-made structure to house a honey bee nest. Several species of Apis live in colonies.
HoneycombA honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal prismatic cells built from wax by honey bees in their nests to contain their brood (eggs, larvae, and pupae) and stores of honey and pollen. Beekeepers may remove the entire honeycomb to harvest honey. Honey bees consume about of honey to secrete of wax, and so beekeepers may return the wax to the hive after harvesting the honey to improve honey outputs. The structure of the comb may be left basically intact when honey is extracted from it by uncapping and spinning in a centrifugal machine, more specifically a honey extractor.
