The Honeybee is one of the most beneficial insects in the world. There are some 150 U.S. crops and more than 50 California crops pollinated by honeybees, for example, apples, fruits, berries, almonds, melons, cucumbers, clovers and alfalfa. We have the honeybee to thank for one third of all the food we eat. Without the bees, we would be eating mostly rice, wheat, and corn instead of the wonderful variety of fruits, vegetables, and nuts we enjoy today. This insect pollinates billions of dollars of agricultural crops each year. In addition, it is impossible to determine the tremendous value these pollinators have in our urban gardens. Now, since the demise of all of our feral (wild) honeybee populations, their value in our neighborhoods is greater than ever.

A colony of honeybees is a cluster of bees that live together as a family with a single mother, within the hive. There are three castes of bees in each colony. As an individual the most important one is the queen bee. She is the sole egg producer in the hive and can lay approximately 1,500 eggs per day, if there are enough young worker bees to care for them. Without a queen mother, the colony would soon dwindle and die out. Worker honeybees are all female. It is their duty to care for the various stages of young bee development or brood, from eggs to adult bees. Workers also clean and guard the hive, provide undertaker tasks, build honeycomb, care for the queen, and gather nectar and pollen from the flowers. These worker bees can be seen traveling back and forth from the hive throughout the day. The number of bees in a typical colony here in California fluctuate between 15,000 and 45,000 workers per colony. These industrious bees are responsible for the most delicious and healthful of sweets: honey.

What we call honey bees are represented by eight to 10 species in the genus Apis, a name from which comes the word for beekeeping (apiculture) and the word for a bee yard (apiary). The species of honey bee commonly found today in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas is Apis mellifera, which means honey carrier. This name is not technically correct as the bees carry nectar from flowers which they then use to produce honey back in the hive. Only when the bees are moving to a new nest (swarming) do they carry honey.

There are 24 races of Apis mellifera. The races have different physical and behavioral characteristics such as body color, wing length, and susceptibility to disease. But, since they are all of the same species, bees from one race can mate with bees from another race, creating even more variation within the honey bee universe. Caucasian bees (A. mellifera caucasica) are known to be extremely docile, whereas the black or German bees (A. mellifera mellifera) are known to overwinter well in severe climates. The African group of bees includes not only the largest number of geographic races (12), but also some of the best known, such as the notorious A. mellifera scutellata. It was a few queens of this highly defensive race that were brought into Brazil in 1957 and started the bees we now know as "Africanized honey bees," or "killer bees."

The true honey bee was not native to the Americas. Prior to Columbus, people in Central and South America collected honey from bees known as "stingless bees." Although stingless bees do actually lack a stinger, they are not completely defenseless. They can inflict painful bites with their mandibles. They also do not produce honey in the same quantity as A. mellifera.

In the early part of the 16th century, the Spanish brought over the first honey bee colonies. English colonists did the same and soon honey bees had escaped into the wild and were buzzing all over North America. In some cases, the honey bees travelled in advance of the European settlers and came in contact with Native American tribes, who dubbed them "white man's flies." By the time the frontier had been settled, late in the 19th century, honey bees were regarded as a natural part of the insect world in North America.

In Brazil and other tropical areas, the introduced honey bees did not survive as well as they did in temperate climates. In an effort to improve honey production in the tropics, a scientist began some breeding experiments using some of the common European honey bees and crossing them with the A. mellifera scutellata bees. This Africanized mixture proved to have the highly defensive behavior of the African race. In 1957 some of the bees escaped, and they have been slowly spreading northwards ever since. Africanized honey bees reached Arizona in 1993.