Honey bee
A honey bee (also spelled honeybee) is a eusocial flying insect within the genus "Apis" of the bee clade, all native to Eurasia. They are known for their construction of colonial nests from wax, the large size of their colonies, and surplus production and storage of honey, distinguishing their hives as a prized foraging target of many animals, including honey badgers, bears and human hunter-gatherers. Only eight surviving species of honey bee are recognized, with a total of 43 subspecies, though historically 7 to 11 species are recognized. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the roughly 20,000 known species of bees.

The best known honey bee is the western honey bee ("Apis mellifera"), which has been domesticated for honey production and crop pollination; the only other domesticated bee is the eastern honey bee ("Apis cerana"), which occurs in South Asia. Some other types of related bees produce and store honey, and have been kept by humans for that purpose, including the stingless bees, but only members of the genus "Apis" are true honey bees. Modern humans also value the wax for use in making candles, soap, lip balms, and various cosmetics.
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eusocial
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flying insect
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genus
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bee
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clade
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Eurasia
LOC
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colonial
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wax
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honey
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foraging
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honey badger
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bears
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Q27443
hunter-gatherer
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Q7432
species
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Q68947
subspecies
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Q30034
western honey bee
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Q134624
pollination
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Q306939
Apis cerana
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Q771405
South Asia
LOC
Q127768
stingless bee
Concept
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candle
Concept
Q34396
soap
Concept
Q1518347
lip balm
Concept
Q131207
cosmetics
Concept
Q102857
Honey bee
Concept
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43
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7
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+11^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
11
NUMBER
taxon rank
natural product of taxon
different from
instance of