Modern humans also use beeswax in making candles, soap, lip balms and various cosmetics, as a lubricant and in mould-making using the lost wax process.

[7][8][9] 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.

One of its subspecies, the Indian honey bee (A. c. indica), was domesticated and kept in hives in a fashion similar to A. mellifera, though on a more limited, regional scale.

This would fit the hypothesis that the ancestral stock of cave-nesting honey bees was separated into the western group of East Africa and the eastern group of tropical Asia by desertification in the Middle East and adjacent regions, which caused declines of food plants and trees that provided nest sites, eventually causing gene flow to cease.

[24] The diversity of A. mellifera subspecies is probably the product of a largely Early Pleistocene radiation aided by climate and habitat changes during the last ice age.

That the western honey bee has been intensively managed by humans for many millennia – including hybridization and introductions – has apparently increased the speed of its evolution and confounded the DNA sequence data to a point where little of substance can be said about the exact relationships of many A. mellifera subspecies.

Escaped swarms (known as "wild" honey bees, but actually feral) spread rapidly as far as the Great Plains, usually preceding the colonists.

Honey bees did not naturally cross the Rocky Mountains; they were transported by the Mormon pioneers to Utah in the late 1840s, and by ship to California in the early 1850s.

Novel hybrid strains of domestic and re-domesticated Africanized honey bees combine high resilience to tropical conditions and good yields.

The ten most important crops,[45] comprising 60% of all human food energy,[46] fall into this category: plantains are sterile and propagated by cuttings, as are cassava; potatoes, yams, and sweet potatoes are root vegetables propagated by tubers; soybeans are self-pollinated; and rice, wheat, sorghum, and maize, are wind-pollinated, as are most other grasses.

[citation needed] Still, honey bees are considered "crucial to the food supply, pollinating more than 100 of the crops we eat, including nuts, vegetables, berries, citrus and melons.

Adult worker honey bees consume 3.4–4.3 mg of pollen per day to meet a dry matter requirement of 66–74% protein.

[52] Dietary proteins are broken down into amino acids, ten of which are considered essential to honey bees: methionine, tryptophan, arginine, lysine, histidine, phenylalanine, isoleucine, threonine, leucine, and valine.

[52] Honey bees require water to maintain osmotic homeostasis, prepare liquid brood food, and cool the hive through evaporation.

Occasionally on hot days or when nectar is limited, foragers will collect water from streams or ponds to meet the needs of the hive.

In Japan, where A. mellifera is vulnerable to local hornets and disease, the Japanese honey bee A. cerana japonica is used in its place.

[57] However, as humans continued to manipulate the western honey bee and deliberately transferred them on a global scale, diseases simultaneously spread and harmed managed colonies.

[60] Starting in the first decade of the 21st century, abnormally high die-offs (30–70% of hives) of western honey bee colonies have occurred in North America.

[61] It seems to be caused by a combination of factors rather than a single pathogen or poison, possibly including neonicotinoid pesticides[62] or Israeli acute paralysis virus.

As with honey, beeswax is gathered by humans for various purposes such as candle making, waterproofing, soap and cosmetics manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, art, furniture polish, and more.

The fermentation process releases additional nutrients from the pollen and can produce antibiotics and fatty acids which inhibit spoilage.

[75] Propolis is a resinous mixture collected by honey bees from tree buds, sap flows, or other botanical sources, which is used as a sealant for unwanted open spaces in the hive.

In addition to the greater size of the queen, she has a functional set of ovaries, and a spermatheca, which stores and maintains sperm after she has mated.

Typically, it takes a queen 16 days to reach adulthood, with an additional week to begin developing and laying eggs.

While the sting can also penetrate the membranes between joints in the exoskeleton of other insects (and is used in fights between queens), in the case of Apis cerana japonica, defense against larger insects such as predatory wasps (e.g. Asian giant hornet) is usually performed by surrounding the intruder with a mass of defending worker bees, which vibrate their muscles vigorously to raise the temperature of the intruder to a lethal level ("balling").

Another act of defense against nest invaders, particularly wasps, is "body shaking", a violent and pendulum-like swaying of the abdomen, performed by worker bees.

The embedded stinger continues to emit additional alarm pheromones after it has torn loose; other defensive workers are thereby attracted to the sting site.

They also rely on a sophisticated dance language that conveys information about the distance and direction to a specific location (typically a nutritional source, e.g., flowers or water).

Honey bees have a tiny structure that appears similar to a human midbrain, so if it functions the same way they may be able to achieve a small amount of simple awareness of their bodies.

Surely in this is a sign for those who reflect.In ancient Egyptian mythology, honey bees were believed to be born from the tears of the Sun God, Ra.