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Ancestor:

An unknown member of the Apis genus.

Descendants 100,000 Yh:

Tropical Silver Bee
Fruitnectar Bee 

Typical  Peak Hive Population:  60,000 bees
Typical  Hive Space in Volume: 50 Litres

Dietary Needs: Pollen and nectar from flowers , honey made from pollen and nectar and other sugary plant secretions.

Life Cycle: Sex is determined by ploidy. Females are diplod and males (drones) are haploid. Drones are produced by queens and have no fathers, while females are produced by fertilisation of gametes between a drone and queen. Workers of this species do not reproduce but are still of vital importance to the colony. Castes can be lightly compared to tissues if the colony were an organism. Only the queen can make a new colony as she is the only one that can lay the eggs. If she doesn't make the infertile workers she won't survive long-term.

All eggs are laid by the queen in open hive cells. They are cleaned and checked by the newest workers. When they hatch into larvae they look like white, eyeless, legless maggots.  They are fed and cleaned for about a week before the cell construction by workers is complete, resulting in the larva being sealed inside. When sealed inside they pupate, going from a relatively featureless worm into the adult bee form. How much "royal jelly" they were fed and when determines which caste in the case of females. To-be-queens are fed royal jelly and a lot more of it, while to-be-workers are weaned off it and fed bee bread and honey in the days before sealing-in. Metamorphosis takes almost three weeks for queens, around three weeks for workers and slightly over three weeks for drones.

Queens mate with drones at congregation sites with bees from different colonies. She stores sperm long-term and uses it gradually to fertilize the eggs that she lays in the future to make workers and the next generation of queens.  Without this sperm she can only produce the male drones. Queens have a longer life expectancy (up to five years), than the workers that live for months, or the drones that don't survive their one time mating.

Colonies can reproduce via fission of the colony population, also known as swarming. Around half the population with a queen remains in the old nest to repopulate it, while the new population flies off led by another queen to seek a favourable habitat to build a new nest in.

Other:  Western Honey Bees are temperate climate bees. In such climates they rely on a large store of honey to see them through the winter. Honey is stored and sealed in the hexagonal cells of the wax hive. These cells also have other purposes, such as larval incubation mentioned above, or storage of pollen-rich "bee bread".

They also do not abscond as readily as other species of honey bee. During dire conditions hives may often die out where they are instead of move on. Swarming is also a more rare event than with others of the Apis genus.