Talk:Western honey bee/Archive 1

Technical term
The discussion of A. mellifera caucasica includes a technical term that may not be familiar to all readers. "PROPOLIZE: To fill with propolis, or bee glue; used to strengthen the comb and seal cracks, it also has antimicrobial properties." Walter Siegmund (talk) 02:12, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Lots of new stuff will come out of the gene sequencing.
Really just added this as a heads-up for the recent sequencing of the honeybee. The three big items which need incorporating are,

Genetic evidence for Africa bee migrations to Europe.

Sequencing shows large number of genes for smell and low number for taste

e.g. Seen on New Scientist and National Geo and Nature, the honeybee has 170 genes for odour receptors. This is more than the two other insects which have been sequenced so far, the fruit fly with 62 and the mosquito with 79. This is in contrast to the honeybees only having 10 taste receptors compared with about 70 in the other insects. Hunny tastes so yummy - Pooh.

Master Regulator genes that manage bee behaviour Ttiotsw 09:10, 28 October 2006 (UTC)


 * This could be Main Page material. Here's the editorial in Nature. Please update the article and post a headline on In the news section on the Main Page/Candidates. Thanks. --64.229.226.140 04:39, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

This should be the main page for anything specifically related to A. mellifera
Too many editors were placing content that specifically and exclusively referred to A. mellifera in the Honey bee article; I have moved all of these setions and their references and links here, where they belong. The Honey bee article should be reserved for content that refers to all of the species of Apis collectively; content regarding A. mellifera should, in the future, be placed here, or on the pages for the different subspecies, or different mellifera-related topical pages. Peace, Dyanega 00:56, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I am uncomfortable with that solution and have explained my reasons at Talk:Honey bee. Rossami (talk) 03:11, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I realize that you are uncomfortable, and I have made a few accommodating changes - in addition to explaining my reasons - in Honey bee and Talk:Honey bee. Readers will just have to get used to coming to this page, the same way they need to navigate to the house mouse page after typing in mouse, since "mouse" in WP actually refers to a genus, and not a species, exactly as in the present case. The house mouse is not the only mouse, the African elephant is not the only elephant, the Norway rat is not the only rat, the mallard is not the only duck, the eastern cottontail is not the only rabbit, the bottlenose dolphin is not the only dolphin, the house sparrow is not the only sparrow, etc., even though "common understanding" of the more general names is that they refer to those single, familiar species. WP should properly reflect this hierarchy of names, and honey bee was an exception that had gone uncorrected for too long. If you honestly believe that you are correct, I would ask you to make your objections known to the editors of all the articles I have mentioned above, and any others where a single well-known species functions in the vernacular as a synecdoche for a much more inclusive name. If you can persuade the other editors to adopt "common understanding" use of common names instead of technically correct usage, then and ONLY then it might be acceptable to revert to using the honey bee article to discuss just one species of honey bee. I do not expect you will find any agreement with that approach for the other species above, and I see no reason that honey bees should be treated as an exceptional case, as is done for dog, cat, or cow (and which are vastly more universal). The criterion cannot be "are average people unaware of the existence of multiple species in a group?" because most laypeople probably are not aware that mice, rats, rabbits, dolphins, and sparrows all are represented by many species. Dyanega 23:25, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Please stop putting words into my mouth. I didn't say that I hated the idea nor have I attempted to revert your change.  As you said, you are making some significant changes to honey bee to make the distinction more visible to average readers and to make it easier for them to find the page they really want.  I'm more than willing to grant the benefit of doubt while you restructure the respective pages.  If it works, great.  (And if I can help, I will.  I've held back because I don't yet have a clear picture of we should structure the relationships between these related topics.)  If it doesn't work, we can discuss it then.  One of the great features of Wikipedia is how easy it is to take an article back to a prior version if we decide that's the right thing to do.
 * So, having finally admitted that I've never liked the amorphous relationships between the various bee-related topic pages, I'd like to propose the development of that structure as a task for the newly formed WikiProject on beekeeping. Let's take a few minutes to plan out roughly what kind of content should be at bee, what at honey bee, what at species or race-level pages and what should be sliced out to pages that might cross multiples of these pages.  Since you seem to have a vision for that structure, would you be willing to create the first draft?  Rossami (talk) 00:19, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
 * ( edit move conflict (!))I'm going offline now (sleepy time..), but I just thought I'd say - if you wish to, you can create a subpage of the WikiProject to fill in a plan - might make organisation easier and more centralised.  Feel free :) M a rtinp23 00:25, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I apologize if I interpreted "am uncomfortable with" as meaning "dislike" - it is an understandable interpretation, I think you'll admit. My "vision", as I mentioned to Martin, is simply that I oversee the taxonomy of the Insecta, and so any insect page with a taxobox is considered within my jurisdiction, especially if it relates to bees, which are my specialty. The structure for taxonomy is that of the Linnaean hierarchy; that is the only structure I am advocating be adhered to, and placing information exclusively about a single species on a genus-level page is a violation of that logical hierarchy, and should only be done if that species lacks its own page. I have no plans or ideas for any other pages besides those with taxoboxes, which is where our two respective wikiprojects overlap. Dyanega 01:01, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Dispute regarding bee communication
Bob Parks of the University of Maryland claims the bee's genome is insufficiently complex to allow for bee communication. http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN06/wn110306.html 64.81.192.156 01:05, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
 * And his credentials in the area of bee research are exactly what again? Or even basic biology?  Chaos theory, perhaps?  Not according to the credentials page of his own website... When his criticism gets published in a peer-reviewed journal, we can consider it.  Rossami (talk) 02:25, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Try dispute "bee communication " -wikipedia on Googlesearch. The dispute is widespread and certainly deserves to be mentioned in a balanced article. Paul venter 06:17, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * It is discussed at great length in the accompanying article Bee learning and communication. Since it has its own article, it is only briefly mentioned here. Dyanega 18:08, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Types of Hives
"There are seven basic types of beehive: skeps, Langstroth hives, top-bar hives, box hives, log gums, D.E. hives and miller hives."

This is hardly a complete list. Also, what is a "miller" hive? I've never heard of it before. You don't have British Standard, WBC, Smith etc. But to me there are really only two main "types" of beehives. Fixed comb (skeps, gums, box hives etc.), and movable comb (Top Bar Hives, British Standard, Langstroth, Smith, WBC etc.). Movable comb can be subdivided into vertical and horizontal (stacked up boxes vs "coffin" hives). And those could each be divided into those using frames and those using only a top bar. I'll bet without much trouble I could come up with a very long list of hives currently in use in the world which would be much longer than seven. There are certainly more WBC and BS and Smith hives in the world than DE hives (although I've had DE hives and have never had WBC, BS, or Smith hives). If you want a complete list, then let's go for a really complete list. If you want to list the most common ones among English speaking beekeepers, the only two that would make that list would probably be Langstroth and British Standard. If you wanted to add more, WBC and Smith would probably be next on the list.

Michael Bush (talk) 22:10, 6 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Given that this is NOT the article on Beehives, if you can find a reliable published source that recognizes only fixed comb and movable comb as "basic types" of beehive, then please go ahead and replace the section of text above with an appropriate citation. Any detailed discussion of types of hive, their relative frequency, and how to classify them should definitely be saved for the Beehive] article and left out of this article; all that is needed here is a brief mention, and a link to the main article on hives. Too much of the material in the articles related to beekeeping practices is uncited, and it would be helpful to have someone who actually has beekeeping literature to help out with those articles. However, this article is more of a bridge between the taxonomy/biology articles and the beekeeping articles, and beekeeping information here should be limited in scope. Dyanega (talk) 17:14, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Historical image
I thought someone might be interested to incorporate this image in the article which I have uploaded on Commons, mainly for use in the German Wikipedia. Cheers, --Dietzel65 (talk) 08:45, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Moving article to the original and much more common name, "European Honey Bee"
Google searches:

"european honey bee" -wikipedia   -- 31,200 results

"western honey bee" -wikipedia  -- 5,360 results  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.199.198.59 (talk) 02:42, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Honey
The Honey Section seems to be more about the honey and less about the bee.

Valserian (talk) 01:13, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Lead image
In my opinion the image proposed does a better job of illustrating the honey bee than the current image. If no objections in 12 hours, then I will be bold and make the changes. --Muhammad (talk) 17:32, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree. It isn't as pretty, but it is more informative. Hesperian 00:32, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Why does apis mellifera redirect here?
Apis mellifera is not another name for the european honeybee, which is also native to africa, asia, and the middle east. this needs to be moved to western honey bee, or we need a new article for the whole species. Michael1115 (talk) 16:51, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Move
I have just moved this article content from "Western Honey Bee" to "European Honey Bee" -- the much more common name.

Google searches:

"european honey bee" -wikipedia -- 31,200 results

"western honey bee" -wikipedia -- 5,360 results —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.199.198.59 (talk • contribs)


 * Comment: If this page-move proposal sticks, it needs to be temporarily undone and re-executed using the pagemove button, not via copy-paste as user:76.199.198.59 recently did. Copy-paste disrupts the tracability of the attribution of comments and content.  Retaining the history of attribution is a requirement of GFDL.  Rossami (talk) 04:46, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Despite more google searches, you have given this article a title which is unquestionably wrong. The european races of apis mellifera are only a few of them. I'm moving it back, if no one objects. Michael1115 (talk) 16:55, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

"article too long tag". Why?
The article has a over long tag. It seems fine to me - not more than most thorough articles. I would have thought it was short if anything (given a chunk of it is lists). Any objection to removing it? Spanglej (talk) 02:02, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
 * It's currently 40kb, and was at one point 53kb. However WP:SIZE advises considering keeping articles between 30–50kb. So this article should be fine.
 * Also, two large chunks were removed recently ( and ) so I'd completely agree that the tag can be removed, for now. Have boldly done so. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:41, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Cheers Spanglej (talk) 19:54, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Geographical distribution of subspecies
Just looking at the subspecies in the sidebar, there are some (especially iberica and saharensis) that I wouldn't really consider to be North-Western Europe, more South-Western. Likewise, carnica, cecropia, and macecdonia seem more Eastern/South-Eastern than South-Western Europe. I don't know if there's an official designation of European bee areas, but it doesn't seem to make sense to me. Keepstherainoff (talk) 10:58, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Questions and a comment
This is article is fairly well-written and quite interesting. I have a few questions and a comment.

1. How do queens get killed by worker bees?

2. How do two queens fight to death?

3. "Honey bees use special pheromones, or chemical communication, for almost all behaviors of life" Should it be "chemical communicators"?

4. "Honey bees are an excellent animal to study with regard to behavior because they are abundant and familiar to most people. An animal that is disregarded every day has very specific behaviors that go unnoticed by the normal person". These sentences are strange. I would remove them (let me know what you think).

ICE77 (talk) 04:42, 17 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Good questions. Some preliminary answers:
 * 1. Workers can kill a queen by violently tearing her apart - ripping off legs, with their mandibles, etc.  This is uncommon but may occur if the beekeeper introduces a new, foreign queen to the colony too quickly.  Workers can also kill a queen by balling her - that is, clustering around her in a big ball, insulating the ball with their own bodies and deliberately shivering to drive up the temperature inside the ball until she dies from the heat and carbon dioxide poisoning.  (Workers are more tolerant of heat extremes than the other castes.)  Honey bee has a picture of bees using this same technique against a hornet.
 * 2. If the first queen emerges early enough, she will sting the rival queens (her sisters) right through the cell wall, killing them before they emerge.  If two queens emerge at the same time, they sting each other until one dies.  Note:  Some recent research has shown that the workers have a surprising degree of influence over which queen emerges and when.  They basically trap the queen they don't want either with their bodies or by repairing the cell cap faster than the virgin queen can tear it down.
 * 3. I think either would be grammatically acceptable - and both are clumsier than they could be.  Do you have better wording?
 * 4. Agree but I think the original contributor of that sentence was trying to say that honeybees are studied in far higher proportion than any other insect.  They are arguably the most studied non-human species on the planet.  There's a reason why and we should explain that if we can.
 * Rossami (talk) 15:18, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Rossami, thanks a lot. You wrote truly interesting stuff on some truly interesting points, especially 1. and 2. Regarding 3., I would write "Honey bees use chemical communicators such as pheromones for almost all behaviors of life". For 4., we could use some of your comments and mix them with the original text to clarify and convey the correct idea.

ICE77 (talk) 23:34, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

How did North American plants polinate before honeybees arrived?
The article implies that there were no honeybees in the Americas until the arrival of Europeans. We're told that if the honeybees die out, agriculture will fail. How did plants reproduce in North America before honeybees arrived? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.82.216.91 (talk) 03:15, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
 * There are a number of native pollinators that supported the native plants. And some plants do not require insect-based pollination at all.  Corn (maize) for example is a grass and is primarily wind-pollinated.  The majority of our food crops, however, were imported at about the same time as the honeybees and are dependent on them. Non-honeybee pollinators (other than wind) tend to be single-species.  That is, a species of bumblebee co-evolved with a species of plant such that it needs nectar at about the same time as the plant needs pollination.  The rest of the year, the bumblebee lifecycle doesn't need as much nectar so the bumblebee is not pollinating - not enough to matter anyway.  Or the bumblebee evolved a particular length and shape probiscus to reach the nectar in a particular plant but a different bumblebee has to work the species right next door.  Honeybees are generalists.  They have a huge and constant demand for nectar and pollen that sends them out foraging across multiple seasons and species.  The lifecycle of a honeybee makes it more adaptable to the kinds of industrial-scale agriculture that we need to feed our current population. But there's also some hype in your original statement.  Agriculture will not "fail" if honeybees all disappear, nor will we all starve.  But you would have to get used to a diet of primarily grains and other wind-pollinated crops.  You would have to get used to a lot less meat (since the clover and alfalfa they eat is honeybee pollinated at agricultural scales) and the fruits and vegetables that we take for granted and consider essential for a balanced diet would be much more scarce and far more expensive.  Rossami (talk) 05:24, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you, that was very informative and made a lot of sense to me. One more question.  I have heard that maize is actually dependent upon humans for pol'ination, and that if all people died, corn would all die out in less than two years.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.82.216.91 (talk) 14:36, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Not to my knowledge but since it's not a honey plant, I've not studied maize in any detail. Rossami (talk) 17:49, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
 * maize is a grass, which broadcasts its pollen. sklundy (talk) 02:56, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The context re maize is incorrect, but the underlying statement is correct. Maize is incapable of reproducing without human intervention.  It is the single most modified plant on earth.  The original side branches of teosinte were modified by human selection into "ears" as we know them today.  There are numerous other adaptations that make it ideal for cultivation but preclude it from any form of natural reproduction.  If humans stop cultivating maize, then maize will disappear within a few years.  But this conversation should be held re the Maize page.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.120.23.27 (talk) 21:20, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Comments
Hi all. I am currently participating in a school project to contribute to Wikipedia. I am learning a lot and would like to leave some comments regarding this article. Please feel free to respond.

This article on the western honey bee is a C-class quality article of mid-importance. Given the importance level and its links to genetics and the study of eusociality, it would be beneficial to raise the article quality to “Good”. Citations may be required for the count of the 28 subspecies mentioned in the geographical distribution and the assertion that 10% of colonies can have two queens. The taxonomical clarification in the first paragraph could be moved to a separate section after the Contents box in order to highlight the other aspects of importance. A portion of the section concerning drones could be removed: “They truly do not have a father….flying gametes.” The reason for this recommendation is that the prior sentences adequately convey this information. The section on “Breeding”, while detailed, can be abbreviated to a few examples in order to shorten the article. The section describing the shaking signal describes a detailed experiment. It could be shortened and also moved to the main article: “Bee learning and communication.” An additional aspect of the interaction between the queen and the worker bee is “worker policing.” This can be mentioned in the article after the discussion of the queen scent. A citation to studies done by Ratnieks and Visscher would supplement this addition.

GenesBrainsBehaviorNeuroscienceKL (talk) 23:22, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Update: I have added a section on Queen-Worker Conflict. Please leave comments on modifications needed.

GenesBrainsBehaviorNeuroscienceKL (talk) 17:08, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi I am also participating in a school project to contribute to Wikipedia. This article contains a plethora of information, ranging from geographic distribution to biology and life cycle, to the honey it makes. The page has many different categories that seem to cover all of its bases. The life cycle was very detailed along with the inclusion of the different types of workers and their tasks. Some missing information that can be found in the book, "An Introduction to Behavioural Ecology," by Davies, Krebs, and West include the relations between queen and her offspring, and the offspring with each other. The analysis of the related coefficients shows that the queens are expected to try and suppress worker reproduction. A key study by Ratnieks and Visscher (1989) explains ‘worker policing,’ where they experimentally introduced male eggs that had been laid by either queen or worker. They found that the worker eggs had been removed or eaten by other workers, not the queen (they placed her behind a wire mesh). It’s believed that it’s a chemical cue on the queen laid eggs that makes the difference. So, worker policing provides an explanation why worker laid eggs are very rare. This is because other workers prefer their brothers to their nephews ( r=.25 > r=.125). Under the Talk tab, there is an interesting discussion on how North American plants pollinated before the honey bees arrived from Europe. Agriculture wouldn’t fail if all honey bees disappeared, we would have to get used to a diet of primarily grains and other wind-pollinated crops. There would be a lot less meat (since the clover and alfalfa they eat is honeybee pollinated at agricultural scales) and the fruits and vegetables that we take for granted and consider essential for a balanced diet would be much more scarce and far more expensive. Alexliu818 (talk) 19:54, 25 September 2012 (UTC)


 * There are citations, better images and useful bits of information on Apis mellifera scattered in other articles, notably Honeybee and its subarticles, and the German Wikipedia Westliche Honigbiene article. Abductive  (reasoning) 18:59, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Apis mellifera (Latin or Greek?)
There is a mistake concerning the genus-species name origin. The name of the genus Apis is indeed Latin for bee. But mellifera is Greek from meli- (not mel!) meaning honey and -fera meaning to bring. At the article about Melissa (which is honey bee in Greek), it is stated that -fera is derived from Greek for wild beast. But -fera is actually derived from Latin for wild beast (e.g. modern word feral). In any case, unless there are any objections (which I can't see why), in 24h I will add the Greek origin of meli- and both probabilities of Greek or Latin origin for -fera. Kalambaki2 23:56, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

The current intro no longer makes sense. It first says "Apis mellifera" and then "tried later to correct it to Apis mellifera" and how the old name stuck. I trust someone knows how it should be... --ASmartKid (talk) 19:58, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I am practically certain that the Latin for honey is not "meli". At the same time I am certain that the Greek for honey is "meli", since I'm Greek and I ate MELI on bread last night. The article is wrong concerning naming. 79.103.187.216 (talk) 11:37, 21 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The word mellifera means honey-producing in Latin, as the link above makes clear. The Latin word for honey is indeed mel,mellis. The base of the word, used in compounds, is mell-; note the double-el. The suffix -ifer, -ifera, -iferum in Latin is used to form adjectives from nouns indicating things that bear, produce, or carry that noun, for instance, arbor fructifera, a fruit-bearing tree, or arbor frondifera, a leaf-bearing tree, or arbor lanifera, a cotton-bearing tree, thurifer, a cleric who carries incense. It derives from the Latin verb ferre meaning to carry, to produce, to give birth. It is closely related to the suffix -ger, meaning the same thing, e.g., armiger, an arms bearer. It is distinct from ferus, meaning wild, which comes from the verb ferire, meaning to smite or to attack.


 * The Latin noun mellifex and adjective mellificus, mellifica, mellificum, meaning honey-maker or honey-building are usually used to describe beekeepers and their trade, and not bees. That’s not to say Linnaeus couldn’t have gotten it wrong; he was a biologist, not a classicist, but I note that there is no reference supplied for this amusing anecdote, and so I intend to delete it too. Rwflammang (talk) 03:03, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

European subspecies
I think northwestern European and southwestern European subspecies should be merged into Europe. I don't see the point of keeping them separated.

ICE77 (talk) 21:51, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Colony Collapse Disorder
The Wikipedia article Colony Collapse Disorder treats that subject as a critical problem for honeybees, the environment and humans, while this article hardly mentions it. This should be reconciled by someone who knows more about bees than me.

Ttulinsky 05:35, 8 April 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ttulinsky (talk • contribs)

Adding of map
I just noticed a map has been made of the origin of apis mellifica, see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apis_mellifera_distribution_map.svg can it be included in the article ?

It seems that although there are 28 subspecies, they all originated from Africa (I assume the maker of the map indicated the correct area in Africa). A map with the subspecies can be found at http://www.imkerpedia.nl/wiki/index.php/Ondersoorten_van_de_Apis_mellifera (perhaps this map can be linked). However, I also prefer the single location, and true origin the maker of the map has provided. 91.182.100.6 (talk) 09:24, 5 June 2012 (UTC)


 * That's a wonderful map, and I'd like to include it here, but I don't know if it is free. Are there any Netherlanders who can tell me whether that Wiklpedia-like website has free content which we can take? I've never heard of Imkerpedia. Rwflammang (talk) 01:59, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

General Comments
Overall, this is a very strong article, but a few organizational changes might improve it even further. One of the strengths of the article is its focus on beekeeping products such as honey and beeswax, which have vital economic value to humans. The extensive description of biology and life cycle is also an excellent way to start an article. However, an important category to add would be colony structure. While the article addresses the roles of drones and queens, it would be more logical if these distinctions, along with workers, occurred as sub-points under a larger single category of social structure. Additionally, the genome category should be separated out on its own and then a separate behavior section should be added that includes the relocated headings of communication and pheromones. Categories like social interactions and interactions with other species could then be added to the section as well to add more behavioral information and references. This would be a more logical way to organize a behavior section rather than under the nonsensical heading of genome. This article deserves the rating of high-importance as it is covers information on a pollinator species used for essential ecosystems services. The B-class rating could likely become A-class with slight reorganization and more elaboration on certain concepts like colony collapse disorder and pollinator decline, which should be a priority since this is rated as a high-importance article.

Mkfreiler (talk) 20:11, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

This article was written comprehensively with an abundance of information on this bee species. One of the strengths of this article is the thorough section on Beekeeping, which emphasizes the importance of this bee species for honey production to humans. Something interesting I learned about this species is that there are seven different types of beehives this species can construct, all of which differentially impact colony health, wax, and honey production. Three categories that are missing in the outline include colony defense behavior, mating behavior, and nest recognition behavior. Colony defense behavior is important to include because it gives the reader insight to how this bee species would react to a predator or different invading bee species to protect its own nest. Mating behavior is important because it helps explain how this bee species sexually reproduces via the Queen/Drone interaction, which would also clarify how a Queen may sexually select from the drones (male bees). Nest recognition behavior is also important because it would explain how this bee species would be able to tell the difference between its own nest and other nests, as well as bees that behave differently when not at their home nest. Looking at the talk page, I agree with the B-class rating, but could easily become A-class once the article balances to have more information on inter- and intra-species behaviors (i.e. colony defense, nest recognition). Marcus.kwon (talk) 22:38, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

This article is thorough and has distinct relevant sections that explain the geographical location, behavioral mechanisms, as well as the lifestyle of the Western Honey Bee. I learned about the mechanism behind making new queen bees, the genetic difference between male and female honey bees, and the “dancing” form of communication. I believe that one category that could have been added would be habitat. The authors of the article did mention geographical location; however, it was too broad, and only spoke of the continents in which honey bees are located and not of the physical habitat they live in. I also believe that sexual investment should have been another category in explaining the bias towards the production of male or female eggs. Another category would be colony defense. The article does talk about honey bee predators but not about how the colony counteracts attacks. I think that this article deserves its ranking as a B-class vital article to Science. Significant research has been done on the Honey Bee, and its species has been vital to the understanding of behavioral ecology amongst insects. Vsalazar258 (talk) 03:55, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Some areas that are missing that should be included are: kin selection, sex ratios, and predator defense. The queen-worker conflict section summarizes kin selection and sex ratios, but both these topics could be defined more. The predator section gives a good variety of predators, but doesn’t discuss anywhere how the honeybees defend themselves from these predators. Also, for organizational purposes, I think it would make sense to put the Genome section after Thermoregulation, and move the Honey Production section down with Beekeeping. Liz.yucknut (talk) 10:46, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on Western honey bee. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20150929070749/http://www.life.illinois.edu/suarez/publications/Whitfield_etal2006Science.pdf to http://www.life.illinois.edu/suarez/Publications/Whitfield_etal2006Science.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20110511024618/http://www.royalalbertamuseum.ca:80/natural/insects/bugsfaq/goldspd.htm to http://www.royalalbertamuseum.ca/natural/insects/bugsfaq/goldspd.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 10:40, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Article opening
The first paragraph reads:


 * "The western honey bee or European honey bee (Apis mellifera) is the most common of the ~40 species of honey bee worldwide."

However, if you read the Honey bee article, it clearly says there are only seven recognized species of honey bees. Are we confusing species with subspecies? Tal.reichert (talk) 21:24, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Fixed this. It should read 7-12--there is still some dispute in the scientific community between the "splitters" and "lumpers", but 40 is very high. M. A. Broussard (talk) 22:59, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

The single-sentence second paragraph (in the opening section, right before the outline) states"


 * "In 2007, media attention focused on colony collapse disorder, a decline in European honey bee colonies in a minority of regions of North America."

Actually, the decline in European honey bee colonies has been observed across the world. I am editing the sentence. Skyduster (talk) 07:36, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Refimprove section tag
I added a Refimprove tag to the beekeeping section. Lack of references here is related to a dearth of references and inline citations on the beekeeping main page. If you improve here, please consider making similar improvements on the beekeeping main page.Cliff (talk) 03:47, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Workers - fertile or sterile?
Statements "The queen lays all the eggs in a healthy colony" and "Workers are sterile females" are not exactly correct, since some workers actually participate in the reproduction as described in the "Queen-worker conflict" section and in related articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.168.151.39 (talk • contribs)
 * Under normal conditions (i.e. in a "healthy colony") workers do not lay eggs; beekeepers consider the presence of laying workers to be abnormal and undesirable. Often, laying workers are a sign of queenlessness, a deeply suboptimal condition, fatal to a colony lacking larvae younger than three days. Workers are "sterile" in the sense of being capable of laying only unfertilized haploid eggs. The statements you mention are appropriate for the lead section, which is meant to summarize the body of the article; the lead does not need to mention all outlying possibilities. Just plain Bill (talk) 12:33, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Various comments
The global distribution picture is misleading; it shows that Western Honey Bees don't live in the center of Africa or Alaska but I am most certain that this is not true. In the second paragraph of the the "life cycle" section it says that when the old queen leaves with a swarm that she takes two thirds of the adult population with her BUT in the "queens" section it says that the queen takes about half, this is repeated information that doesn't agree. There is repeating information within the "Queens" section as well and I believe it can be condensed. Besides that this is a very thorough article and I enjoyed reading it. There was some drama in the talk portion putting this article together but it looks like that have sorted it out, for now. It's a level-4 vital article in Biology and belongs to 2 wiki-projects. There is so much information in this article, it really goes in depth all about the Western Honey Bee, in class we have only mentioned it here and there. May I suggest adding pictures of the subspecies with corresponding links. When the temperature in the hive was discussed, was this referring to the average temperature of an overall standard box hive or the center of a brood cluster average?--CKAbegg (talk) 05:31, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Claims of human dependency need re-work.
It's writing and tone is closer to a talk page debate section than an informative one. Worse, it makes claims that are not profided by the sources given, for example as it currently stands, it starts out as; - then proceeds to give a couple of sources, none of which state this. In fact one of the source clearly states.
 * Western honey bees are often described as being essential to all human food production, leading to claims that without their pollination, all of humanity would starve or even die out


 * Even if you hate bees, you need them. They are responsible for much of the food on your plate. Bees perform a task that is vital to the survival of agriculture: pollination. In fact, one third of our global food supply is pollinated by bees.

It follows up with a borderline tangent on a false assertion giving examples of wind polination and self polination. None of which are relevant to apis melifera. instead of writing which crops don'y need animal polination i propose adding the ones that do. Will be re-working the section a bit. And I'm open to suggestion in writing or tone since english isnt my first language. SWAGnificient (talk) 05:04, 15 July 2019 (UTC)


 * The present contents of the re-named section are even less relevant to the article than the text you replaced, as nearly every listed quote and reference is to pollinators in general, or to bees in general, and almost none of this material refers strictly to Apis mellifera - in fact, it still lists plants which are not pollinated by this species (despite your statement above), and implies that they are important pollinators of these plants (e.g., cucumbers, melons, kiwifruis). Adding misinformation is not an improvement over the prior versions. The deleted text did, at least, provide clear examples of the plants not pollinated by Apis, which is still important information, because it defines the limits of this species' impact on agriculture. For now, until and unless you can provide reliable sources that discuss Apis meliifera specifically, I intend to remove the statements that talk about all bees or all pollinators. Dyanega (talk) 21:10, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Inconsistent number of subspecies
This article in the right column at the top says: "Subspecies - 29 currently recognized, see list" and it points to List of Apis mellifera subspecies. The number of subspecies there is 31. Therefore, both numbers should be 31.

ICE77 (talk) 05:24, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Section: queen - worker conflict
"When a fertile female worker produces drones, a conflict arises between her interests and those of the queen. The worker shares one-half of her genes with the drone and one-quarter with her brothers, favouring her offspring over those of the queen. The queen shares one-half of her genes with her sons and one-quarter with the sons of fertile female workers"

the above is accurate, but i think it is not very well formulated for the laypersons understanding. "bees show a greater interest in raising the next generation of bees that share a greater a part of their genes with them. so the queen prefers raising her own daughters/sons who each own one-half of the queens genes as opposed to raising the offspring of her daughter the female worker who will each carry only one-quarter of the queens genes. from the point of view of the female worker bee she is interested the most in her own offspring who carry one-half of the egg laying female worker bee, while the female worker bee has on average only one-quarter genes in common with her sisters/brothers the offspring of the queen bee." something along these lines (i guess it is still far from perfect. (i try avoid using multiple expressions for the offspring like: drones, the drone, sons - in order to allow the reader to concentrate on the relationship and avoid initiating unnecessary musings about whether sons or drones or the drone should mean the same or are implying some subtle difference). also a brief mention of the idea of interest being in ensuring the creation of individuals that carry the most possible genes similar to those carried by the parent and thus preferring own offspring to brothers (50% gene similarity vs. 25%) makes understanding the argument easier. imho. 89.134.199.32 (talk) 12:36, 31 May 2020 (UTC).

Range figure (disputed)
The purported range for Apis mellifera is shown by the figure File:Apis mellifera distribution map.svg, created in 2011 by User:Sémhur.

The source of data cited for that figure only appears to include land-based collection points, but the range map has been drawn to 'fill in' all of the gaps. (One also wonders if the map suffers from a lack of sampling that inadvertently 'erases' bees from much of Russia.)

This results in a somewhat implausible range map that includes vast swathes of the world's oceans. (Point Nemo, more than 2600 km from any land, appears to be included.) While honeybees have been known to forage out to ranges of 10 or 15 km, I am unable to locate any evidence of their ability to travel more than a hundred-fold further. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:36, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Well that was terribly sarcastic and thorough. Anyway seriously, I'm convinced. I agree you should go ahead do that and then Commons:File talk:Apis mellifera distribution map.svg. Invasive Spices (talk) 19:22, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok no one else wanted to so I've deleted it. Also said something on Commons:Talk: . Invasive Spices (talk) 18:05, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Hello. Thank you Invasive Spices for alerting me on my user talk page.
 * Of course, bees are not in the ocean. I think I did this to get a better idea of their distribution in small areas, like the Pacific islands (I wrote "I think" because it was ten years ago; I don't remember exactly!) I can change that.
 * About the points in Russia: the map on discoverlife.org changes over time. This means that ten years ago these points did not exist. I can modify the line in this case.
 * Sémhur 19:53, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Hey great. That's an interesting point: I don't know the best way to show a presence on all those small islands. Glad you're here a decade later to update. Invasive Spices (talk) 21:02, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, I provide after-sales service
 * The very best way would be to show all the dots as on the original map. But there is 96,496 dots by now, so it's not possible. So I'm thinking of including areas as I've done so far (without the oceans), and adding dots for too small areas likes islands, or too isolated like the point north of Siberia. What do you think about that? Sémhur 21:29, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * As a contributor of data to the DiscoverLife map, I can readily affirm that this map is based on museum specimen records submitted to DL's data portal, from a limited number of sources, and is therefore going to have many gaps now and into perpetuity. I would strongly urge people not to have a map at all. The present text adequately described its range, as all habitable land masses except Antarctica. You don't actually NEED a map to show this. Dyanega (talk) 22:11, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

"Wild heirs of lost British honeybee found"
There may be some useful material in this recent Guardian article: ‘No one knew they existed’: wild heirs of lost British honeybee found at Blenheim. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:30, 8 November 2021 (UTC)


 * We need to be careful in using articles which contain conjecture and not established scientific conclusions: Whenever I see scientific findings based on scientific research to back up the claims being made in the cited article then we can use the research. The kind of statements in the article and it's tone have become increasingly common within the 'hobbyist' community - detached from any scientific basis. For example I started counting the false statements being made in the article and when I got to seven by the fifth line I stopped counting. Bibby (talk) 10:30, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Update: just re-read the first five lines again and I counted nine unscientific claims! Bibby (talk) 10:30, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Translation from Latin?
Is "mellifera" "honey bearing" or "honey making" ??? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:E422:3C01:C923:40FA:32EC:2014 (talk) 08:24, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
 * See melliferous. Just plain Bill (talk) 11:48, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

'Honey bearing' or 'honey carrying' – from the Latin verb "ferre". Billsmith60 (talk) 10:14, 4 August 2022 (UTC)