gady-i-płazy: Western honey bee

Evidence: 100 • authority: 94

The western honey bee or European honey bee ( Apis mellifera ) is the most common of the 7–12 species of honey bee worldwide. The genus name Apis is Latin for "bee", and mellifera is the Latin for "honey-bearing", referring to the species's production of honey for the winter. Like all honey bees, the western honey bee is eusocial, creating colonies with a single fertile female (or "queen"), many normally non-reproductive females or "workers," and small proportion of fertile males or "drones." Individual colonies can house tens of thousands of bees. Colony activities are organized by complex communication between individuals, through both pheromones and the dance language. The western honey bee was one of the first domesticated insects, and it is the primary species maintained by beekeepers to this day for both its honey production and pollination activities. With human assistance, the western honey bee now occupies every continent except Antarctica. Because of its wide cultivation, this species is the single most important pollinator for agriculture globally. Honey bees are threatened by pests and diseases, especially the varroa mite and colony collapse disorder. Western honey bees are an important model organism in scientific studies, particularly in the fields of social evolution, learning, and memory; they are also used in studies of pesticide toxicity, to assess non-target impacts of commercial pesticides. Elsik CG, Worley KC, Bennett AK, Beye M, Camara F, Childers CP, de Graaf DC, Debyser G, Deng J, Devreese B, Elhaik E, Evans JD, Foster LJ, Graur D, Guigo R, HGSC production teams, Hoff KJ, Holder ME, Hudson ME, Hunt GJ, Jiang H, Joshi V, Khetani RS, Kosarev P, Kovar CL, Ma J, Maleszka R, Moritz RF, Munoz-Torres MC, Murphy TD, Muzny DM, Newsham IF, Reese JT, Robertson HM, Robinson GE, Rueppell O, Solovyev V, Stanke M, Stolle E, Tsuruda JM, Vaerenbergh MV, Waterhouse RM, Weaver DB, Whitfield CW, Wu Y, Zdobnov EM, Zhang L, Zhu D, Gibbs RA, Honey Bee Genome Sequencing Consortium. Finding the missing honey bee genes: lessons learned from a genome upgrade. . BMC genomics. 2014 Jan 30; 15:86. Apis mellifera | i5k Workspace@NAL

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

The western 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". Individual colonies can house tens of thousands of bees. Colony activities are organized by complex communication between individuals, through both pheromones and the waggle dance. The western honey bee was one…

Evidence: 72 • authority: 72

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 creation 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 a…

Evidence: 64 • authority: 72

Honey is a sweet and viscous substance made by several species of 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. Honey bees stockpile honey in the hive. Within the hive is a structure made from beeswax called honeycomb. The honeycomb is made up of…

Evidence: 59 • authority: 72

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 and later migrating into eastern and then northern Europe after the last ice age from 9,000BC onwards. Its original range included the southern Urals in Russia and stretched through northern Europe and down to the Pyrenees. They are one of the two members of the 'M' lineage of Apis mellifera, the other being in western China. Traditionally they were called the Black German Bee, although they are now considered endangered in Germany. However today they are more likely to be named after the region in which…

Evidence: 57 • authority: 92

Divergent microbiome signatures between managed and wild honey bee (<i>Apis mellifera</i>) populations in South Texas.. Animal microbiomes are shaped by a complex interplay of host genetics, environment, and lifestyle. Transitions of animals from wild to managed or domesticated conditions can impact the structure and function of their microbiomes. Among insects, the Western honey bee ( Apis mellifera ) is a promising model for studying these dynamics, given its long history of domestication and importance in agriculture. Despite extensive research on managed honey bee microbiomes, direct comparisons with wild populations remain scarce. Here, we compared the gut microbiomes of wi…

Evidence: 52 • authority: 92

Indigenous knowledge-based production practices and utilization of stingless bee honey in humid Afromontane Forest zones of the Southwest and Semi-Arid Forest zone of Ethiopia.. Background This study investigated indigenous knowledge-based production practices and utilization of stingless bee honey (SBH) among rural communities in Ethiopia's humid Afromontane Forest zones of the Southwest (Kaffa, Sheka, Majang, Jimma) and the semi-arid Borena Zone in the South. SBH is an important medicinal, nutritional and cultural resource for these communities, yet information on local production systems, species used, harvest practices and threats are limited. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conduc…

Evidence: 52 • authority: 72

Bees are winged insects that form a monophyletic clade Anthophila within the superfamily Apoidea of the order Hymenoptera, with over 20,000 known species in seven recognized families. Some species – including honey bees, bumblebees, and stingless bees – are social insects living in colonies, whereas over 90% of bee species – including mason bees, carpenter bees, leafcutter bees, and sweat bees – are solitary. Unlike the closely related wasps and ants, who are carnivorous/omnivorous, bees are herbivores that specifically feed on nectar (nectarivory) and pollen (palynivory), the former primarily as a carbohydrate source for metabolic energy, and the latter primarily for protein and other nutr…

Evidence: 45 • authority: 92

The Genus <i>Apis</i> in a Changing World: Distribution, Conservation, Climate, and Anthropogenic Stressors.. (1) Background: Bees of the genus Apis play a fundamental role in ecosystems thanks to their pollination activities and their long evolutionary history. This has resulted in species diversifying and spreading across Asia, Africa, and Europe. This review contextualises the genus within biogeographic and evolutionary frameworks, emphasising the importance of understanding the origins, adaptations, distribution and differences between species. (2) Methods: Recent studies on the biology, taxonomy and ecology of Apis species were analysed, including research on social behavio…

Evidence: 44 • authority: 94

The western honey bee, Apis mellifera , is the most important insect pollinator of agricultural crops worldwide. Numerous food commodities (e.g. almond, apple, watermelon) rely heavily or exclusively on honey bees for fruit, vegetable, or seed production ( Klein et al. 2007 ). In fact, the dependence of agricultural activities on honey bee pollination services has increased during the last few decades ( Aizen et al . 2009 ). In the United States alone, the value of honey bee pollination services is estimated between 10 and 14 billion dollars annually ( Calderone 2012 ). In addition, a variety of honey bee-derived products (e.g. honey, wax, pollen) trade as international commodities ( vanEngelsdorp and Meixner 2010 ). However, despite the critical importance of honey bee genetic diversity for breeding practices and food security, our current understanding of the demographic history and evolutionary origin of contemporary (native and managed) populations of honey bees remains unclear. The western honey bee, Apis mellifera , provides critical pollination services to agricultural crops worldwide. However, despite substantial interest and prior investigation, the early evolution and subsequent diversification of this important pollinator remain uncertain. The primary hypotheses place the origin of A. mellifera in either Asia or Africa, with subsequent radiations proceeding from one of these regions. Here, we use two publicly available whole-genome data sets plus newly sequenced genomes and apply multiple population genetic analysis methods to investigate the patterns of ancestry and admixture in native honey bee populations from Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The combination of these data sets is critical to the analyses, as each contributes samples from geographic locations lacking in the other, thereby producing the most complete set of honey bee populations available to date. We find evidence supporting an origin of A. mellifera in the Middle East or North Eastern Africa, with the A and Y lineages representing the earliest branching lineages. This finding has similarities with multiple contradictory hypotheses and represents a disentangling of genetic relationships, geographic proximity, and secondary contact to produce a more accurate picture of the origins of A. mellifera . We also investigate how previous studies came to their various conclusions based on incomplete sampling of populations, and illustrate the importance of complete sampling in understanding evolutionary processes. These results provide fundamental knowledge about genetic diversity within Old World honey bee populations and offer insight into the complex history of an important pollinator. The genus Apis contains ten distinct species, most of which are distributed across Asia ( Arias and Sheppard 2005 ). The western honey bee, A

Evidence: 44 • authority: 72

Domestication is a multi-generational mutualistic relationship in which an animal species, such as humans or leafcutter ants, takes over control and care of another species, such as sheep or fungi, to obtain from them a steady supply of resources, such as meat, milk, or labor. The process is gradual and geographically diffuse, based on trial and error. Domestication affects genes for behavior in animals, making them less aggressive. In plants, domestication affects genes for morphology, such as increasing seed size and stopping the shattering of cereal seedheads. Such changes both make domesticated organisms easier to handle and reduce their ability to survive in the wild. Terrestrial verte…

Evidence: 38 • authority: 80

Intergenerational and Biochemical Responses of the Western Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) to Sublethal Perfluorooctanesulfonate (PFOS) Exposures