Honey Bee

      Honey bees (or honeybees) are a subset of beesin the genus Apis, primarily distinguished by the production and storage of honey and the construction of perrenial, colonial nests out of wax. Honey bees are the only extant members of the tribe Apini, all in the genus Apis. Currently, there are only seven recognised species of honey bee with a total of 44 subspecies, though historically, anywhere from six to eleven species have been recognised. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the approximately 20,000 known species of bees. Some other types of related bees produce and store honey, but only members of the genus Apis are true honey bees.

      This is the scientific classification of honeybee :

          Kingdom : Animalia

          Phylum : Arthropoda

          Class : Insecta

          Order : Hymenoptera

          Family : Apidae

          Subfamily : Apinae

          Genus : Apis

      These are the type of honeybee species :

          1. Subgenus Micrapis

              a. Apis andreniformis

              b. Apis florea

          2. Subgenus Megapis

              a. Apis dorsata

          3. Subgenus Apis

              a. Apis cerana

              b. Apis koschevnikovi

              c. Apis mellifera

              d. Apis nigrocincta

      How does honeybee produce honey ?

      A honeybee starts the honey making process by visiting a flower and gathering some of its nectar. Many plants use nectar as a way of encouraging insects to stop at the flower. In the process of gathering nectar, the insect transfers pollen grains from one flower to another and pollinates the flower.

Most flower nectars are similar to sugar water -- sucrose mixed with water. Nectars can contain other beneficial substances as well. To make honey, two things happen: Enzymes that bees produce turn the sucrose (a disaccharide) into glucose and fructose (monosaccharides). See how food works for a discussion of food enzymes and saccharides, and most of the moisture has to be evaporated, leaving only about 18-percent water in honey.

      Here is a very nice description of the enzyme process: An enzyme, invertase, converts most of the sucrose into two six-carbon sugars, glucose and fructose. A small amount of the glucose is attacked by a second enzyme, glucose oxidase, and converted into gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide. The gluconic acid makes honey an acid medium with a low pH that is inhospitable to bacteria, mold, and fungi, organisms we call microbes, while the hydrogen peroxide gives short-range protection against these same organisms when the honey is ripening or is diluted for larval food. Honey bees also reduce the moisture content of nectar, which gives it a high osmotic pressure and protection against microbes.