Diet Hive

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a few hundred of those species of bees produce honey. All belong to a sub-species (or genus) called "Apis," but not all Apis bees produce honey. Some are diggers or carpenter bees, not honey-makers. And many which do produce honey make such a small amount that it can't be harvested for human consumption.

Almost all types of bees which produce honey originally came from Asia, and have one important, distinguishing feature. They live in social colonies made up of a queen bee, sterile female worker bees (the foragers who pollinate flowers and gather nectar) and male drones (whose job is to reproduce and make new bees). Fun fact: only the females have stingers.

The most prodigious honey producers are known, not surprisingly, as "honey bees." The ones we're most familiar with are European or Asian honeybees, which nest in cavities when in the wild. Giant honeybees also produce a great deal of honey, but they're native to Nepal and Asia and their stings can be deadly, so they're not commonly found or cultivated in Western nations like the United States and Canada. A third group of honey bees are dwarf bees which nest in shrubs and trees, but they produce so little honey that beekeepers don't bother with them.

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