Apidae
Bees with baskets
The Apidae
This family includes domesticated honeybees (Apis), wild native bumblebees (Bombus), as well as many less-familiar bees that share a
key anatomical feature: corbiculae, or pollen “baskets” on their hind pair of legs, enabling bees to collect and pack more pollen on each trip to patches of flowers. Apidae tend to be longer-distance fliers, and many of them nest together, ranging in organization from the collective provisioning and hierarchy of large honeybee hives; to nest clusters formed by a bumblebee queen and her daughters; to uncoordinated mass aggregations of solitary nests in the digger bees (Anthophora). Social behavior facilitated humans’ domestication of Apis more than 6,000 years ago.
Color patterns often vary within nests based on caste (queens, female workers, and male drones), also between nests, and over larger geographical areas. In other words, a nest of related bumblebees look alike, but nests in the next county or state, may look different! Species must be distinguished anatomically.
