Western honey bee
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[Photo] Western Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) approaching a Milk Thistle flowerhead. Fran??ais : Abeille aterrissant sur une fleur de Chardon-Marie (Silybum marianum). Author http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fir0002 | Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License". |
The Western honey bee or European honey bee (Apis mellifera) is a species of honey bee. The genus Apis is Latin for "bee", and mellifera is Greek from meli- "honey" + ferre "to carry" - hence the scientific name means "honey-carrying bee". This is technically wrong, since honey bees carry nectar and produce honey. However, the name was coined in 1758 by Carolus Linnaeus who in a subsequent publication tried to correct it to Apis mellifica ("honey-making bee"); according to the rules of synonymy in zoological nomenclature, the older name has precedence. Some people who are unaware of this still use the incorrect subsequent spelling. As of October 28, 2006, the Honey Bee Genome Sequencing Consortium fully sequenced and analyzed the genome of Apis mellifera.
In 2007 media attention focused on Colony Collapse Disorder, a "disappearance" of Western honey bee colonies in North America.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_honey_bee
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