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 thermoregulation during periods of varying temperature in both summer and winter. During the summer, however, this is achieved through fanning and water evaporation from water collected in various fields. Of all the honey bee species, only "A. mellifera" has been used extensively for commercial pollination of fruit and vegetable crops. The scale of these pollination services is commonly measured in the billions of dollars, credited with adding about 9% to the value of crops across the world. However, despite contributing substantially to crop pollination, there is debate about the potential spillover to natural landscapes and competition between managed honey bees