Western honey bee "Apis mellifera" is thought to have originated in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Western honey bee The western honey bee or European honey bee ("Apis mellifera") is the most common of the 7–12 species of honey bee worldwide. The genus name "Apis" is Latin for "bee", and "mellifera" is the Latin for "honey-bearing", referring to the species' production of honey. Like all honey bees, the western honey bee is eusocial, creating colonies with a single fertile female (or "queen"), many normally non-reproductive females or "workers," and small proportion of fertile males or "drones." Individual colonies can house tens of thousands of
Honey Bee Genome Sequencing Consortium Honey Bee Genome Sequencing Consortium The Honey Bee Genome Sequencing Consortium is an international collaborative group of genomics scientists, scientific organisations and universities trying to decipher the genome sequences of the honey bee ("Apis mellifera"). It was formed in 2001 by American scientists. In the US, the project is funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, the University of Illinois Sociogenomics Initiative, and various beekeepers association and the bee industry. First scientific findings show that the honey bee