The western honey bee or European honey bee (Apis mellifera) is the most common of the ~40 species of honey bee worldwide. The genus name Apis is Latin for "bee", and mellifera means "honey-bearing", referring to the species' tendency to produce a large quantity of honey for storage over the winter. Western honey bees are an important model organism in scientific studies, particularly in the fields of social evolution, learning and memory; they are also used in studies of pesticide toxicity, to assess non-target impacts of commercial pesticides.
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0