European honey bee

The European honey bee or western honey bee (Apis mellifera) is the main species of honey bee. The genus Apis is Latin for "bee", and mellifera comes from Greek melli- meaning "honey" and ferre "to bear". So, the scientific name means "honey-bearing bee". In 1758 Carolus Linnaeus named the bees as Apis mellifera. However, he later found out that bees do not bear honey, but they actually bear nectar. Because of this, he tried to change it to Apis mellifica ("honey-making bee") later.

Western honey bee (Apis mellifera)
Honey bee foraging on African Oil Palm flowers
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Hymenoptera
Suborder:	Apocrita
Superfamily:	Apoidea
Family:	Apidae
Subfamily:	Apinae
Tribe:	Apini
Genus:	Apis
Binomial name
Apis mellifera Linnaeus, 1758

Workers do a waggle dance in the beehive to tell the others where they have found nectar; Karl von Frisch discovered this.

Other websites

• Flight of Honey Bee finally understood Archived 2008-05-16 at the Wayback Machine
• Honey Bee Pheromones^{[permanent dead link]}
• Cornwall Honey Beepedia
• BeeSource
• Honey Bee Apis mellifera diagnostic pictures, descriptions, natural history
• Brother Adams On-line book
• Beekeeping explained by the Food and Agriculture Organization
• Types of hives by FAO^{[permanent dead link]}
• Interactive 3D flash presentation of Honey beehive Archived 2008-10-14 at the Wayback Machine from PBS
• Brainy Bees Think Abstractly
• Digital library of Beekeeping Archived 2007-09-07 at the Wayback Machine
• Anatomy of the honeybee by the FAO
• Apis mellifera pomonella, a new honey bee subspecies from Central Asia; Apidologie 34 (2003) 367-375; Sheppard and Meixner^{[permanent dead link]}
• Origin of honeybees from the Yucatan peninsula inferred from mitochondrial DNA analysis; Molecular Ecology (2001)10, 1347-1355 Archived 2003-12-29 at the Wayback Machine
• Cyclopedia of American Agriculture Archived 2009-05-02 at the Wayback Machine ed. by L. H. Bailey (1911), Vol. III—Animals, "Bees," including a history of the literature related to European honey bees in the United States.