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A honey bee (or honeybee), in contrast with the stingless honey bee, is any bee that is a member of the genus ''Apis'', primarily distinguished by the production and storage of honey and the construction of perennial, colonial nests from wax. Honey bees are the only extant members of the tribe Apini, all in the genus ''Apis''. Currently, only seven species of honey bee are recognized, with a total of 44 subspecies, though historically, from six to eleven species have been recognized. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the roughly 20,000 known species of bees. Some other types of related bees produce and store honey, but only members of the genus ''Apis'' are true honey bees. The study of honey bees is known as melittology. ==Origin, systematics and distribution== Honey bees appear to have their center of origin in South and Southeast Asia (including the Philippines), as all the extant species except ''Apis mellifera'' are native to that region. Notably, living representatives of the earliest lineages to diverge (''Apis florea'' and ''Apis andreniformis'') have their center of origin there. The first ''Apis'' bees appear in the fossil record at the Eocene–Oligocene boundary (34 mya), in European deposits. The origin of these prehistoric honey bees does not necessarily indicate Europe as the place of origin of the genus, only that the bees were present in Europe by 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 extant members of ''Apis'', the more basal species make single, exposed combs, while the more recently evolved species nest in cavities and have multiple combs, which has greatly facilitated their domestication. Most species have historically been cultured or at least exploited for honey and beeswax by humans indigenous to their native ranges. Only two of these species have been truly domesticated, one (''A. mellifera'') at least since the time of the building of the Egyptian pyramids, and only that species has been moved extensively beyond its native range. Today's honey bees constitute three clades.〔〔 〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「honey bee」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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