Honey Bees
The honey bee's body is golden brown and black in colour, with pale orange or yellow rings on the abdomen. The head, antennae, and all four legs are almost black. The thorax is covered in fine hair. The abdomen is very lightly covered with fine hair similar to that on the thorax. The wings of the honey bee are translucent. Honey bees posess pollen baskets which are made of specialized hairs and are attached to the outer surface of the tibiae, or shins, of the hind legs. The body length of the worker bees is 0.37 - 0.62 in (9.5 - 15.8 mm). The male drone is 0.62 in (15.8 mm), and the queen is 0.75 in (19.5 mm) long. Most honey bee colonies are in man-made commercial hives. Bee swarms that escape usually nest in rotting or hollow trees. A colony of honeybees consists of a single queen, several thousand worker bees, and, at certain times of the year, a few hundred drones. The primary function of the queen is to lays eggs. A honey bee queen can lay as many as 2,000 eggs in a single day. A queen lives for four or five years and in her lifetime can produce as many as two million eggs. The workers are sterile females live about four or five weeks. The workers supply the colony with food, guard the nest, and build the honeycombs. Honey bee drones are fertile males who fly out at certain times of the year to mate with new queens. A single colony can house more than 80,000 bees. Honey bees collect nectar from most floral species and pollinate a wide variety of plants. The body of the honey bee becomes covered with pollen during the collection of nectar. This pollen is then transferred from one plant to another as the bee visits from flower to flower. The survival of the honey bee is very important to the pollination process since they are the singlemost contributor to the pollination of earth's plants. Honey bee colonies are dying or disappearing in record numbers, with potentially devastating effects on agriculture and food supplies. Many believe that the increasing use of chemical pesticides and herbicides, which honeybees ingest during their daily nectar collection, are largely to blame. Another suspect is the genetic crop modification, which may generate pollen with compromised nutritional value. Various other types of related bees produce and store honey, but only members of the genus Apis are true honey bees. York Pest Control does not interfere with Honey Bees or their nests. Currently, there are only seven recognized species of
honey bee.
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Honey Bees are a subset of the bee family. They are distinguished from other bee species by their production and storage of
honey in wax combs and the construction of perennial wax colonies in which they house their nests.
