2 Bee or not 2 Bee

by Jon Burch Photography

Title

2 Bee or not 2 Bee

Artist

Jon Burch Photography

Medium

Photograph - Digital Capture/digital Painting

Description

Dearly beloved, it was the accepted practice in Babylon, 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the brides father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink.

Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month, which we know today as the honeymoon! Betcha didn't know that!

Meanwhile, back at the hive: Honey bees are a subset of bees in the genus Apis, and the tribe Apini - primarily distinguished by the production and storage of honey and the construction of perennial, colonial nests out of wax. Currently, there are only seven recognized species of honey bee with a total of 44 subspecies, though historically, anywhere from six to eleven species have been recognized. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the approximately 20,000 known species of bees. Some other types of related bees produce and store honey, but only members of the genus Apis are true honey bees.

Honey bees appear to have their center of origin in South and South East Asia including the Philippines, as all but Apis mellifera are native to that region. Living representatives like Apis florea and Apis andreniformis are the earliest lineages to diverge and have their center of origin there.

The first Apis bees appear in the fossil record about 23 - 56 Million years ago at the Eocene - Oligocene boundary, in European deposits. The origin of these prehistoric honey bees does not necessarily indicate that Europe is where the genus originated, only that it occurred there at that time. There are few known fossil deposits in South Asia, the suspected region of honey bee origin, and fewer still have been thoroughly studied.

No Apis species existed in the New World during human times before the introduction of Apis melifera by Europeans. There is only one fossil species documented from the New World, Apis nearctica, known from a single 14-million-year old specimen from Nevada.

The close relatives of modern honey bees, the bumblebees and stingless bees, are social to some degree, and social behavior seems a plesiomorphic trait that predates the origin of the genus. Among the extant members of Apis, the more basal species make single, exposed combs, while the more recently evolved species nest in cavities and have multiple combs, which has greatly facilitated their domestication.

Most species have historically been cultured or at least exploited for honey and beeswax by humans indigenous to their native ranges. Only two of these species have been truly domesticated, such as Apis mellifera, at least since the time of the building of the Egyptian pyramids, and only that species has been moved extensively beyond its native range.

Original photograph made on 35 mm Ektachrome, and digitized for uploading prior to the application of the oil treatment.

Image copyright 2013 Jon Burch Photography

Uploaded

April 21st, 2013

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