Honey bee one queen bee, a fertile female; seasonally up to a few thousand drone bees, or fertile males; and tens of thousands of sterile female worker bees. Details vary among the different species of honey bees, but common features include: In cold climates, honey bees stop flying when the temperature drops below about and crowd into the central area of the hive to form a "winter cluster". The worker bees huddle around the queen bee at the center of the cluster, shivering to keep the center between at the start of winter (during the broodless period) and once the queen resumes
Honey bee that time. Few fossil deposits are known from South Asia, the suspected region of honey bee origin, and fewer still have been thoroughly studied. No "Apis" species existed in the New World during human times before the introduction of "A. mellifera" by Europeans. Only one fossil species is documented from the New World, "Apis nearctica", known from a single 14 million-year-old specimen from Nevada. The close relatives of modern honey bees – "e.g." bumblebees and stingless bees – are also social to some degree, and social behavior seems a plesiomorphic trait that predates the origin of the genus. Among the