Western honey bee and Africa", making conservation of wild-bee diversity important. They further argue that the difficulty of controlling drones for mating is a serious handicap and a sign that domestication is not complete, in particular as "extensive gene flow usually occurs between wild/feral and managed honeybee populations". The honey bee is a colonial insect which is housed, transported by and sometimes fed by beekeepers. Honey bees do not survive and reproduce individually, but as part of the colony (a superorganism). Honey bees collect flower nectar and convert it to honey, which is stored in the hive. The nectar, transported in the bees'
Caucasian honey bee Dadant 1975 Caucasian honey bee The Caucasian honey bee ("Apis mellifera caucasia", commonly misspelled "caucasica") is a subspecies of the Western honey bee. The Caucasian honey bee originates from the high valleys of the Central Caucasus. Georgia is the “central homeland” for the subspecies, although the bees also can be found in eastern Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Caucasian (Georgian) honeybee has a long history of importance to beekeeping worldwide. The bees were first introduced in the United States in 19th century. Caucasian honey bee was a subspecies that came to have enduring interest to U.S. beekeepers. Frank Benton (1852-1919)