A honey bee is a eusocial flying insect within the genus Apis of the bee clade. They are known for construction of perennial, colonial nests from wax, for the large size of their colonies, and for their surplus production and storage of honey, distinguishing their hives as a prized foraging target of many animals, including honey badgers, bears and human hunter-gatherers. In the early 21st century, only seven species of honey bee are recognized, with a total of 44 subspecies, though historically seven to eleven species are recognized. The best known honey bee is the western honey bee which has been domesticated for honey production and crop pollination; modern humans also value the wax for candlemaking, soapmaking, lip balms, and other crafts. 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 and have been kept by humans for that purpose, including the stingless honey bees, but only members of the genus Apis are true honey bees. The study of bees, which includes the study of honey bees, is known as melittology.
Gordon Matthew Thomas SumnerCBE, known as Sting, is an English musician and actor. He was the principal songwriter, lead singer, and bassist for the new wave rock band the Police from 1977 to 1984, and launched a solo career in 1985. He has included elements of rock, jazz, reggae, classical, new-age and worldbeat in his music.
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.
Hornets are the largest of the eusocial wasps, and are similar in appearance to their close relatives yellowjackets. Some species can reach up to 5.5 cm (2.2 in) in length. They are distinguished from other vespine wasps by the relatively large top margin of the head and by the rounded segment of the abdomen just behind the waist. Worldwide, there are 22 recognized species of Vespa, Most species only occur in the tropics of Asia, though the European hornet, is widely distributed throughout Europe, Russia, North America and Northeast Asia. Wasps native to North America in the genus Dolichovespula are commonly referred to as hornets, but are actually yellowjackets.
Beekeeping is the maintenance of bee colonies, commonly in man-made hives, by humans. Most such bees are honey bees in the genus Apis, but other honey-producing bees such as Melipona stingless bees are also kept. A beekeeper keeps bees in order to collect their honey and other products that the hive produce, to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary or "bee yard".
A stinger, or sting, is a sharp organ found in various animals capable of injecting venom, usually by piercing the epidermis of another animal.
The Schmidt sting pain index is a pain scale rating the relative pain caused by different hymenopteran stings. It is mainly the work of Justin O. Schmidt, an entomologist at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Arizona. Schmidt has published a number of papers on the subject, and claims to have been stung by the majority of stinging Hymenoptera.
Summer Solstice: Bee Stings is part two of the four part Seasons collective created by Coil.
A bee sting is a sting from a bee. The stings of most of these species can be quite painful, and are therefore keenly avoided by many people.
Aculeata is a subclade of Hymenoptera. The name is a reference to the defining feature of the group, which is the modification of the ovipositor into a stinger. In other words, the structure that was originally used to lay eggs is modified instead to deliver venom. Not all members of the group can sting; a great many cannot, either because the ovipositor is modified in a different manner, or because it is lost altogether. A large part of the clade is parasitic.
Insect bites and stings occur when an insect is agitated and seeks to defend itself through its natural defense mechanisms, or when an insect seeks to feed off the bitten person. Some insects inject formic acid, which can cause an immediate skin reaction often resulting in redness and swelling in the injured area. Stings from fire ants, bees, wasps and hornets are usually painful, and may stimulate a dangerous allergic reaction called anaphylaxis for at-risk patients, and some wasps can also have a powerful bite along with a sting. Bites from mosquitoes and fleas are more likely to cause itching than pain.
The Andrenidae are a large, nearly cosmopolitan family of solitary, ground-nesting bees. Most of the family's diversity is located in temperate or arid areas. It includes some enormous genera. One of the subfamilies, Oxaeinae, is so different in appearance that they were typically accorded family status, but careful phylogenetic analysis reveals them to be an offshoot within the Andrenidae, very close to the Andreninae.
The Operation M.D. (formerly The Operation) is a Canadian garage rock band created by Doctors Dynamite (Cone of Sum 41) and Rocco (Todd Morse of H2O) as a side project to their other bands. The band's debut album, We Have an Emergency, was released in February 2007 by Aquarius Records. Their second album Birds + Bee Stings was self-released by the band's own label "Mouth To Mouth Music" in June 2010.
Fear of bees, technically known as melissophobia and also known as apiphobia, is one of the common fears among people and is a kind of specific phobia.
A wasp is any insect of the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita that is neither a bee nor an ant. The Apocrita have a common evolutionary ancestor and form a clade; wasps as a group do not form a clade, but are paraphyletic with respect to bees and ants.
Bugged by a Bee is a 1969 animated cartoon, released by Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. It starred Cool Cat, and was the final cartoon from the 1930-1969 era to bear the Looney Tunes name, and the last from that era to be widely released. One more cartoon, Injun Trouble, would follow Bugged by a Bee, but it was in the Merrie Melodies series.
"Sweet the Sting" is a song written and recorded by Tori Amos, released as the second single from the album The Beekeeper (2005). Following the trend of her several previous singles, "Sweet the Sting" was released as a promotional single only, with physical CDs produced for radio stations.
Many species of arthropods regularly or occasionally bite or sting human beings. Insect saliva contains anticoagulants and enzymes that cause local irritation and allergic reactions. Insect venoms can be delivered by their stingers, which often are modified ovipositors, or by their mouthparts. Insect, spider and scorpion venom can cause serious injury or death. Dipterans account for the majority of insect bites, while hymenopterans account for the majority of stings. Among arachnids spider bites and mite bites are the most common. Arthropods bite or sting humans for a number of reasons including feeding or defense. Arthropods are major vectors of human disease, with the pathogens typically transmitted by bites.
