This page is a glossary of beekeeping.

A

Africanized bee The Africanized bee, also known as the Africanized honey bee and known colloquially as the "killer bee", is a hybrid of the western honey bee (''Apis mellifera''), produced originally by crossbreeding of the East African lowland honey bee (''A. ...

– a hybrid bee with characteristics unsuitable for beekeeping * Apiary – a yard where beehives are kept * Apicology – ecology of bees * Apiology – scientific study of bees *

Apitherapy Apitherapy is a branch of alternative medicine that uses honey bee products, including honey, pollen, propolis, royal jelly and bee venom. There has been no scientific or clinical evidence for the efficacy or safety of apitherapy treatments. ...

– a branch of alternative medicine that uses honey bee products including honey, pollen, propolis, royal jelly and bee venom.

B

Bee Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their roles in pollination and, in the case of the best-known bee species, the western honey bee, for producing honey. Bees are a monophyly, monophyletic lineage within the ...

– a member of the order that includes ants and wasps * Bee anatomy (mouth) *

Bee bread Bee pollen, also known as bee bread and ambrosia, is a ball or pellet of field-gathered flower pollen packed by worker honeybees, and used as the primary food source for the hive. It consists of simple sugars, protein, minerals and vitamins, ...

– the main source of food for most honey bees and their larvae * Beekeeper – also called apiarist or apiculturist, a person who cares for bees * Bee learning and communication *

Bee museums Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their roles in pollination and, in the case of the best-known bee species, the western honey bee, for producing honey. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfami ...

Bee sting A bee sting is the wound and pain caused by the stinger of a female bee puncturing skin. Bee stings differ from insect bites, with the venom of stinging insects having considerable chemical variation. The reaction of a person to a bee sting may ...

Bee venom therapy Apitherapy is a branch of alternative medicine that uses honey bee products, including honey, pollen, propolis, royal jelly and bee venom. There has been no scientific or clinical evidence for the efficacy or safety of apitherapy treatments. ...

– also called apitherapy * Beehive – a housing for cavity-dwelling bees that allows inspection and honey removal *

Beekeeping Beekeeping (or apiculture) is the maintenance of bee colonies, commonly in man-made beehives. Honey bees in the genus '' Apis'' are the most-commonly-kept species but other honey-producing bees such as ''Melipona'' stingless bees are also kept. ...

– bees are kept for their products (principally honey), and their utility in pollinating crops *

Bees and toxic chemicals Bees can suffer serious effects from toxic chemicals in their environments. These include various synthetic chemicals, particularly insecticides, as well as a variety of naturally occurring chemicals from plants, such as ethanol resulting from ...

* Brood (honey bee) – the egg, larval, and pupal form of the bee and the comb in which they develop *

Buckfast bee The Buckfast bee is a breed of honey bee, a cross of many subspecies and their strains, developed by Brother Adam (born Karl Kehrle in 1898 in Germany), who was in charge of beekeeping from 1919 at Buckfast Abbey in Devon in the United Kingdom ...

– a productive breed of bee suitable for damp and cloudy climes

C

Carniolan honey bee The Carniolan honey bee (''Apis mellifera carnica'', Pollmann) is a subspecies of the western honey bee. The Carniolan honey bee is native to Slovenia, southern Austria, and parts of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Hungary, ...

– a gentle bee good for variable nectar flow *

Characteristics of common wasps and bees While observers can easily confuse common wasps and bees at a distance or without close observation, there are many different characteristics of large bees and wasps that can be used to identify them. __NOTOC__ See also * Schmidt sting pain index ...

* Colony Collapse Disorder – malady of unknown cause characterized by disappearance of bees from hive

D

* Deseret – the beehive and its symbolism to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) *

Diseases of the honey bee Diseases of the honey bee or abnormal hive conditions include: Pests and parasites ''Varroa'' mites ''Varroa destructor'' and ''V. jacobsoni'' are parasitic mites that feed on the fat bodies of adult, pupal and larval bees. When the hive ...

Drone bee A drone is a male honey bee. Unlike the female worker bee, drones do not have stingers. They gather neither nectar nor pollen and are unable to feed without assistance from worker bees. A drone's only role is to mate with a maiden queen in nupt ...

– the male bee * Drone laying queen

H

* Honey bee – all the species in the genus ''Apis'' *

Honey bee life cycle The honey bee life cycle, here referring exclusively to the domesticated Western honey bee, depends greatly on their social structure. Honey bee colony life Unlike a bumble bee colony or a paper wasp colony, the life of a honey bee colony is pe ...

– the physical stages in the development of a mature bee starting from the egg

I

* Italian bee – the most well known honey bee subspecies

L

Laying worker bee A laying worker bee is a worker bee that lays unfertilized eggs, usually in the absence of a queen bee. Only drones develop from the eggs of laying worker bees (with some exceptions, see thelytoky). A beehive cannot survive with only a laying work ...

– this worker will produce only drone bees * Langstroth hive – commonly seen in developed countries as stacks of white or muted colored boxes at the edges of fields and orchards

N

Northern Nectar Sources for Honey Bees The nectar resource in a given area depends on the kinds of flowering plants present and their blooming periods. Which kinds grow in an area depends on soil texture, soil pH, soil drainage, daily maximum and minimum temperatures, precipitation, ...

– common names and descriptions of northern latitude nectar plants

P

* Pesticide toxicity to bees * Piping queen – queens will make audible sounds at certain times * Pollinator decline – loss of bees and other pollinators is an environmental issue

Q

* Queen bee – a single egg laying bee capable of producing workers, drones, and queens

R

Honey bee race Within biological taxonomy, a honey bee race would be an informal rank in the taxonomic hierarchy, below the level of subspecies. It has been used as a higher rank than strain, with several strains making up one race. Therefore, a strain (within ...

Russian honey bee The Russian honeybee refers to honey bees (''Apis mellifera'') that originate in the Primorsky Krai region of Russia. This strain of bee was imported into the United States in 1997 by the USDA Agricultural Research Service's Honeybee Breeding, Gen ...

S

* Stingless bees – ''Trigona'' and ''Melipona'' bees kept from ancient times in Central America and Australia *

Swarming Swarm behaviour, or swarming, is a collective behaviour exhibited by entities, particularly animals, of similar size which aggregate together, perhaps milling about the same spot or perhaps moving ''en masse'' or migrating in some direction. ...

– the means by which bee colonies propagate

T

Top-bar hive A top-bar hive is a single-story frameless beehive in which the comb hangs from removable bars. The bars form a continuous roof over the comb, whereas the frames in most current hives allow space for bees to move up or down between boxes. Hives t ...

– an alternative to the Langstroth box hive, with some advantages for casual beekeeping

V

* Virgin queen – a queen that has not yet bred with drones

W

* Western honey bee – European honey bees * Worker bee – the many tasks performed by this class of bee during her short lifetime and her specialized single-use stinger

References

{{BeeColonyMemberTypes

Wikipedia glossaries using unordered lists