Bees are flying bugs intently associated with wasps and ants, regarded for his or her position in pollination and, withinside the case of the best-regarded bee species, the western honey bee, for generating honey. Bees are a monophyletic lineage in the superfamily Apoidea. They are currently taken into consideration a clade, referred to as Anthophila. There are over 16,000 regarded species of bees in seven identified organic households.
Human beekeeping or apiculture has been practised for millennia, in view that at the least the instances of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. Bees have seemed in mythology and folklore, via all levels of artwork and literature from historical instances to the existing day, despite the fact that ordinarily targeted withinside the Northern Hemisphere wherein beekeeping is a long way greater common.
Evolution
The ancestors of bees have been wasps withinside the own circle of relatives Crabronidae, which have been predators of different bugs. The transfer from insect prey to pollen might also additionally have resulted from the intake of prey bugs which have been flower site visitors and have been in part protected with pollen after they have been fed to the wasp larvae. This equal evolutionary state of affairs might also additionally have passed off in the vespoid wasps, wherein the pollen wasps developed from predatory ancestors. Until recently, the oldest non-compression bee fossil have been observed in New Jersey amber, Cretotrigona prisca of Cretaceous age, a corbiculate bee. A bee fossil from the early Cretaceous, Melittosphex burmensis, is taken into consideration "an extinct lineage of pollen-amassing Apoidea sister to the cutting-edge bees". Derived capabilities of its morphology region it definitely in the bees, however it keeps unmodified ancestral traits of the legs, displaying its transitional status.
The incredibly eusocial corbiculate Apidae seemed kind of 87 Mya, and the Allodapini round fifty three Mya.
The Colletidae seem as fossils simplest from the past due Oligocene to early Miocene.
The Melittidae are regarded from Palaeomacropis eocenicus withinside the Early Eocene.
The Megachilidae are regarded from hint fossils from the Middle Eocene.
The Andrenidae are regarded from the Eocene-Oligocene boundary, round 34 Mya, of the Florissant shale.
The Halictidae first seem withinside the Early Eocene with species observed in amber. The Stenotritidae are regarded from fossil brood cells of Pleistocene age.
Coevolution
The earliest animal-pollinated flora have been shallow, cup-formed blooms pollinated with the aid of using bugs inclusive of beetles, so the syndrome of insect pollination become nicely hooked up earlier than the primary look of bees. The novelty is that bees are specialised as pollination agents, with behavioral and bodily adjustments that mainly beautify pollination, and are the maximum green pollinating bugs. In a procedure of coevolution, flora advanced floral rewards inclusive of nectar and longer tubes, and bees advanced longer tongues to extract the nectar. The look of those systems drove the adaptive radiation of the angiosperms, and, in turn, bees themselves. Bees coevolved now no longer simplest with flora however it's miles believed that a few species coevolved with mites. Some offer tufts of hairs referred to as acarinaria that seem to offer accommodations for mites; in return, it's miles believed that mites devour fungi that assault pollen, so the connection in this situation can be mutualistc.
Phylogeny
External
This phylogenetic tree is primarily based totally on Debevic et al, 2012, which used molecular phylogeny to illustrate that the bees arose from deep in the Crabronidae, that's consequently paraphyletic. The placement of the Heterogynaidae is uncertain. The small subfamily Mellininae become now no longer covered on this analysis.
Internal
This cladogram of the bee households is primarily based totally on Hedtke et al., 2013, which locations the previous households Dasypodaidae and Meganomiidae as subfamilies withinside the Melittidae. English names, wherein available, are given in parentheses.
Characteristics
Bees vary from intently associated corporations inclusive of wasps with the aid of using having branched or plume-like setae, combs at the forelimbs for cleansing their antennae, small anatomical variations in limb structure, and the venation of the hind wings; and in females, with the aid of using having the 7th dorsal stomach plate divided into half-plates.
