Western honey bee and Africa", making conservation of wild-bee diversity important. They further argue that the difficulty of controlling drones for mating is a serious handicap and a sign that domestication is not complete, in particular as "extensive gene flow usually occurs between wild/feral and managed honeybee populations". The honey bee is a colonial insect which is housed, transported by and sometimes fed by beekeepers. Honey bees do not survive and reproduce individually, but as part of the colony (a superorganism). Honey bees collect flower nectar and convert it to honey, which is stored in the hive. The nectar, transported in the bees'
Honey bee surface of the comb, which is horizontal (not vertical, as in other species), and worker bees orient the dance in the actual compass direction of the resource to which they are recruiting. "Apis mellifera carnica" honey bees use their antennae asymmetrically for social interactions with a strong lateral preference to use their right antennae. There has been speculation as to honeybee consciousness. The bee was used as a symbol of government by Emperor Napoleon I of France. Both the Hindu "Atharva Veda" and the ancient Greeks associated lips anointed with honey with the gift of eloquence and even of prescience.