Western honey bee Since workers are not fully sexually developed, they do not mate with drones and thus can only produce haploid (male) offspring. Queens and workers have a modified ovipositor, a stinger, with which they defend the hive. Unlike bees of any other genus and the queens of their own species, the stinger of worker honey bees is barbed. Contrary to popular belief, a bee does not always die soon after stinging; this misconception is based on the fact that a bee will usually die after stinging a human or other mammal. The stinger and its venom sac, with musculature and a
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