Cape honey bee

The Cape honey bee or Cape bee (Apis mellifera capensis) is a southern South African subspecies of the Western honey bee. They play a major role in South African agriculture and the economy of the Western Cape by pollinating crops and producing honey in the Western Cape region of South Africa.

The Cape honey bee is unique among honey bee subspecies because workers can lay diploid, female eggs, by means of thelytoky, while workers of other subspecies (and, in fact, unmated females of virtually all other eusocial insects) can only lay haploid, male eggs. Not all workers are capable of thelytoky- only those expressing the thelytoky phenotype, which is controlled by a recessive allele at a single locus (workers must be homozygous at this locus to be able to reproduce by thelytoky).

Interaction with African bees

In 1990 beekeepers transported Cape honey bees into northern South Africa, where they don't occur naturally. This has created a problem for the region's A. m. scutellata populations. Reproducing diploid females without fertilization bypasses the eusocial insect hierarchy; an individual more related to her own offspring than to the offspring of the queen will trade in her inclusive fitness benefits for individual fitness benefits of reproducing her own young.

Honey bee

A honey bee (or honeybee), in contrast with the stingless honey bee, is any bee that is a member of the genus Apis, primarily distinguished by the production and storage of honey and the construction of perennial, colonial nests from wax. Honey bees are the only extant members of the tribe Apini, all in the genus Apis. Currently, only seven species of honey bee are recognized, with a total of 44 subspecies, though historically, from six to eleven species have been recognized. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the roughly 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. The study of honey bees is known as melittology.

Origin, systematics and distribution

Honey bees appear to have their center of origin in South and Southeast Asia (including the Philippines), as all the extant species except Apis mellifera are native to that region. Notably, living representatives of the earliest lineages to diverge (Apis florea and Apis andreniformis) have their center of origin there.

Honey bee (disambiguation)

Honey bee and Honeybee may refer to:

Entertainment

Honey Bee (Blake Shelton song)

"Honey Bee" is a song written by Rhett Akins and Ben Hayslip, and recorded by American country music artist Blake Shelton. It was released in April 2011 as the first single from his sixth studio album Red River Blue. On November 30, the song received a Nomination in 54th Grammy Awards for Best Country Solo Performance, but lost to Taylor Swift's "Mean".

History

Blake Shelton debuted "Honey Bee" at the Academy of Country Music awards telecast on April 3, 2011, where he also sang "Who Are You When I'm Not Looking". "Honey Bee" was released to digital retailers immediately after the broadcast.

Content

Rhett Akins and Ben Hayslip, two-thirds of the "Peach Pickers" writing ensemble, wrote the song. Akins said that he first thought of writing a song called "Huckleberry" after seeing an article in Billboard magazine about former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. He then changed the word to "honeysuckle", and came up with the line "You be my honeysuckle / I'll be your honey bee." Akins said that he thought that "it was a different way for the guy to say, 'we should date, I love you.'"