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Nature
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| [Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note |
Honey bees (or honeybees) are a subset of bees which represent a far smaller fraction of bee diversity than most people suspect; of the approximately 20,000 known species of bees, there are only seven presently-recognized species with a total of 44 subspecies (Engel, 1999; historically, anywhere from six to eleven species have been recognized). These bees are the only living members of the tribe Apini, all in the genus Apis, and all of which produce and store liquefied sugar ("honey") to some degree, and construct colonial nests out of wax secreted by the workers in the colony. Other types of related bees produce and store honey, but only members of the genus Apis are considered true honey bees.
Apis mellifera,the most commonly domesticated species, is the third insect to have its genome mapped. It originated in Tropical Africa and spread from there to Northern Europe and East into Asia. It is also called the Western honey bee. There are many sub-species that have adapted to the environment of their geographic and climatic area. Behavior, color and anatomy can be quite different from one sub-species or race to another. In 1622, first European colonists brought the sub-species Apis mellifera mellifera to the Americas. Many of the crops that depend on honey bees for pollination have also been imported since colonial times. Escaped swarms (known as wild bees, but actually feral) spread rapidly as far as the Great Plains, usually preceding the colonists. The Native Americans called the honey bee "the white man's fly". Honey bees did not naturally cross the Rocky Mountains; they were carried by ship to California in the early 1850s. The so-called "killer bee" is a strain of this species, with ancestral stock of African origin (thus often called "Africanized"). In early 2007, abnormally high die-offs of Western honey bee colonies in the US were attributed to a condition dubbed "Colony Collapse Disorder", which has since been reported from Europe, though the cause remains unknown. |
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queklle netteté! Bravo et j'aime bien les couleurs de ta photo!
Bravo
Olá João,
Belas cores e perfeição em detalhe e nítidez.
Origada por compartilhar.
Melhores cumprimentos,
Lurdes
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