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 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