Honey Bee

Honey Bee picking honey from spring flowers near Lake Eymir of Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey.

Honey bees are a subset of bees, primarily distinguished by the production and storage of honey and the construction of colonial nests out of wax. Honeybees are the only extant members of the tribe Apini, all in the genus Apis. Currently, there are only seven recognized species of honey bee with a total of 44 subspecies though historically, anywhere from six to eleven species have been recognized. 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. [Wikipedia]