A honey bee is a eusocial flying insect within the genus Apis of the bee clade, all native to Eurasia. They are known for their construction of perennial colonial nests from wax, the large size of their colonies, and 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. Only eight surviving species of honey bee are recognized, with a total of 43 subspecies, though historically 7 to 11 species are recognized. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the roughly 20,000 known species of bees.
A beehive is an enclosed structure in which some honey bee species of the subgenus Apis live and raise their young. Though the word beehive is commonly used to describe the nest of any bee colony, scientific and professional literature distinguishes nest from hive. Nest is used to discuss colonies that house themselves in natural or artificial cavities or are hanging and exposed. Hive is used to describe an artificial/man-made structure to house a honey bee nest. Several species of Apis live in colonies, but for honey production the western honey bee and the eastern honey bee are the main species kept in hives.
The European dark bee is a subspecies of the western honey bee, whose original range stretched from west-central Russia through Northern Europe and probably down to the Iberian Peninsula. They belong to the 'M' lineage of Apis mellifera. They are large for honey bees though they have unusually short tongues (5.7-6.4 mm) and traditionally were called the German Dark Bee or the Black German Bee, names still used today even though they are now considered an Endangered Breed in Germany. Their common name is derived from their brown-black color, with only a few lighter yellow spots on the abdomen. However today they are more likely to be called after the geographic / political region in which they live such as the British Black Bee, the Native Irish Honey Bee, the Cornish Black Bee and the Nordic Brown Bee, even though they are all the same subspecies, with the word “native” often inserted by local beekeepers, even in places where the bee is an introduced foreign species. It was domesticated in Europe and hives were brought to North America in the colonial era in 1622 where they were referred to as the English Fly by the Native Americans.
Mimosa tenuiflora, syn. Mimosa hostilis, also known as jurema preta, calumbi (Brazil), tepezcohuite (México), carbonal, cabrera, jurema, black jurema, and binho de jurema, is a perennial tree or shrub native to the northeastern region of Brazil and found as far north as southern Mexico, and the following countries: El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Colombia and Venezuela. It is most often found in lower altitudes, but it can be found as high as 1,000 m (3,300 ft).
The dwarf honey bee, Apis florea, is one of two species of small, wild honey bees of southern and southeastern Asia. It has a much wider distribution than its sister species, Apis andreniformis. First identified in the late 18th century, Apis florea is unique for its morphology, foraging behavior and defensive mechanisms like making a piping noise. Apis florea have open nests and small colonies, which makes them more susceptible to predation than cavity nesters with large numbers of defensive workers. These honey bees are important pollinators and therefore commodified in countries like Cambodia.
The elm cultivar Ulmus 'Berardii', Berard's Elm, was raised in 1865, as Ulmus Berardi, from seeds collected from large specimens of "common elm" growing on the ramparts at Metz, by an employee of the Simon-Louis nursery named Bérard. Carrière (1887), the Späth nursery of Berlin and the Van Houtte nursery of Gentbrugge regarded it as form of a Field Elm, listing it as U. campestris Berardii, the name used by Henry. Cheal's nursery of Crawley distributed it as Ulmus nitens [:Ulmus minor] 'Berardii'. Smith's of Worcester preferred the original, non-specific name, Ulmus 'Berardii'.
The putative Wych Elm cultivar Ulmus glabra 'Dovaei', or Doué elm, was raised by the André Leroy nursery at Angers, France, as Ulmus dovaei, before 1868. The Baudriller nursery of Angers marketed it as Ulmus Dowei, "orme de Doué", suggesting a link with the royal nurseries at nearby Doué-la-Fontaine, which stocked elm. Green considered it a form of wych.
Anadenanthera colubrina var. cebil is a mimosa-like timber tree native to Caatinga and Cerrado vegetation in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Peru. It has also been introduced to Mauritius. It grows up to 25 m (82 ft) tall, with a trunk diameter of 60–90 cm (24–35 in). The tree's mimosa-like leaves range in length from about 7–20 cm (2.8–7.9 in). The flowers are cream-colored and arrive in the spring. The seed pods are fairly straight and contain about 8 to 15 seeds each. The seeds are flat, average each about 1.5 cm (0.59 in) in diameter and have an average mass of about 0.125 g (0.0044 oz) each. The tree's wood has a density of about 840 kg/m3 (1,420 lb/cu yd).
The Field Elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Pendula' was said to have been raised in Belgium in 1863. It was listed as Ulmus sativa pendula by C. de Vos in 1887, and by Boom in 1959 as a cultivar.
The East African lowland honey bee is a subspecies of the western honey bee. It is native to central, southern and eastern Africa, though at the southern extreme it is replaced by the Cape honey bee. This subspecies has been determined to constitute one part of the ancestry of the Africanized bees spreading through North and South America.
Dipteryx charapilla is a little-known species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae, a large to mid-sized tree growing along rivers in the rainforests of Brazil and Peru.
Hedyosmum mexicanum is a species of plant in the family Chloranthaceae. It is found in Guatemala and Mexico. It is threatened by habitat loss.
Erechtites hieraciifolius is a plant in the daisy family, Asteraceae. It is native to the Americas, but is found many places around the world having been introduced by human activity. It is introduced in Hawaii, China, and Southeast Asia.
Mimosa ophthalmocentra, or jurema-embira, is a tree in the family Fabaceae. It is native to Brazil. It is shrub or small tree about 3 to 5 m tall. Its blossoms come in long, narrow cylindrical spikes having yellowish white petals and a white stamen. The blossoms are sometimes found to have a pink tinge. The fruit is green, sometimes with red or purple, flat, about 8 cm long and about 1 cm wide.
The western honey bee or European honey bee is the most common of the 7–12 species of honey bees worldwide. The genus name Apis is Latin for "bee", and mellifera is the Latin for "honey-bearing", referring to the species' production of honey.
Grevillea repens, the creeping grevillea, is a prostrate woody shrub endemic to Victoria, Australia. It is a member of the 'southern holly-leaf grevilleas' and closely related to Grevillea obtecta.
Apis cerana, the eastern honey bee, Asiatic honey bee or Asian honey bee, is a species of honey bee native to South, Southeast and East Asia. This species is the sister species of Apis koschevnikovi and both are in the same subgenus as the western (European) honey bee, Apis mellifera. A. cerana is known to live sympatrically along with Apis koschevnikovi within the same geographic location. Apis cerana colonies are known for building nests consisting of multiple combs in cavities containing a small entrance, presumably for defense against invasion by individuals of another nest. The diet of this honey bee species consists mostly of pollen and nectar, or honey. Moreover, Apis cerana is known for its highly social behavior, reflective of its classification as a type of honey bee.
Beekeeping in Ireland has been practised for close to 1500 years and has seen a surge in popularity in modern times, evidenced by the numerous organisations promoting and assisting beekeeping. Despite the increased pressures on bees and beekeepers through new diseases and loss of habitat, there are now in excess of 3,500 members within beekeeping associations.
FloraNT is a public access web-based database of the Flora of the Northern Territory. It provides authoritative scientific information on some 4300 native taxa, including descriptions, maps, images, conservation status, nomenclatural details together with names used by various aboriginal groups. Alien taxa are also recorded. Users can access fact sheets on species and some details of the specimens held in the Northern Territory Herbarium, together with keys, and some regional factsheets.
The Herbier National De Guinée is the national herbarium of the Republic of Guinea. Attached to the Gamal Abdel Nasser University of Conakry it was established in 2009 to house a collection of plant specimens found within the country. Its mission is to research and conserve Guinea's botanical heritage and create a network of regional herbaria and botanical gardens and is responsible for contributing to the implementation of the Government's national research policy in the field of plant knowledge. The number of specimens currently housed is 9800 plant and mycological specimens. Since its foundation the HNG has partnered with the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, a relationship which will continue until at least 2021.
