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
Cape honey bee honeybee workers expressing the thelytoky phenotype can produce progeny by automictic thelytoky with central fusion (see diagram). Central fusion allows heterozygosity to be largely maintained. The oocytes that undergo automixis display a greater than 10-fold reduction in the rate of crossover recombination. The low recombination rate in automictic oocytes favors maintenance of heterozygosity and the avoidance of inbreeding depression. Cape honey bee The Cape honey bee or Cape bee ("Apis mellifera capensis") is a southern South African subspecies of the Western honey bee. They play a major role in South African agriculture and the economy of the Western Cape by