Pollinator Glossary

Amitraz is a miticide—a chemical used to control mites. Beekeepers have used it against varroa, but resistance is becoming a growing concern in some regions.

Appears on: Honey Bee History

Anatolia is the large peninsula that makes up most of modern Turkey. It was home to several important ancient cultures and empires, including the Hittites.

Appears on: Honey Bee History

An apiary is a place where beehives are kept. It can be as small as a few backyard colonies or as large as a commercial bee yard with many hives.

Appears on: Honey Bee History

Apis is the honey-bee genus: the biological group that includes the western honey bee and its Asian relatives. When scientists talk about an Apis species, they mean one of the true honey bees.

Appears on: Honey Bee History

Apis mellifera is the western honey bee, the main species used in most of the world’s beekeeping. It is naturally native to Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and western Asia, and people later carried it to many other places.

Appears on: Honey Bee History

The Asian honey bee (Apis cerana) and the western honey bee (Apis mellifera) are two closely related species of honey bee. They share a common ancestor, but have followed separate evolutionary paths for millions of years.

Over that time, their populations have adapted to different environments. Asian honey bees are native to South, Southeast, and East Asia, while western honey bees are native to Africa, Europe, and parts of Asia.

Appears on: Honey Bee Health

Bee space is the narrow gap—about 6 to 9 millimeters—that bees usually leave open for moving around. If the gap is smaller, they tend to seal it with propolis; if it is larger, they often fill it with comb.

Appears on: Honey Bee History

The brood nest is the central area of the hive where the queen lays eggs and developing bees—eggs, larvae, and pupae—are raised. Worker bees keep the brood nest at a very stable temperature, typically around 93–95°F (34–35°C), regardless of outside conditions. The brood nest is surrounded by bands of pollen for larval food, with honey stored in the upper and outer frames. Beekeepers pay close attention to the brood nest during hive inspections as its condition reflects the overall health of the colony.

Appears on: Honey Bees

The Chalcolithic, or Copper Age, is the period between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. People were farming, living in settled communities, and starting to use copper alongside stone tools.

Appears on: Honey Bee History

A fixed-comb hive is one where the bees attach comb directly to the walls or roof of the hive. That makes inspection and honey harvest much harder because the comb cannot be lifted out cleanly like a removable frame.

Appears on: Honey Bee History

The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian civilization that built a major Bronze Age empire in the second millennium BCE. Their law codes are one of the written sources showing that bees and hives already had real economic value.

Appears on: Honey Bee History

The Levant is the eastern Mediterranean region that includes today’s Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and parts of nearby Syria and surrounding areas. Archaeologists often use “southern Levant” for the southern part of that region.

Appears on: Honey Bee History

A monoculture is a large area planted mostly or entirely with a single crop, such as almonds or canola. It can create a huge short-term bloom, but often provides less year-round habitat and food diversity for pollinators.

Appears on: Honey Bee History

The Nok culture was an ancient society in what is now Nigeria, best known for distinctive terracotta sculpture and early ironworking. Its pottery has also preserved evidence of bee-product use.

Appears on: Honey Bee History

A non-native social wasp lives beyond its natural range. The European paper wasp, for example, was introduced to North America from Europe, probably hidden in shipping materials. Non-native describes its origin, while social describes colony life.

Appears on: European Paper Wasp, Wasps & Yellowjackets

Honey bees rely heavily on chemical signals called pheromones to coordinate colony life. The queen produces pheromones that suppress the development of other queens and signal her presence to workers. Alarm pheromones alert guard bees to threats at the hive entrance. Foragers use pheromones to mark flowers they have already visited, and workers use them to help guide swarms to new nest sites. Pheromones are one of the primary ways the colony acts as a coordinated whole rather than thousands of separate individuals.

Appears on: Honey Bees

Propolis is a sticky resin that bees make from plant gums and tree resins. They use it like a kind of bee caulk to seal cracks, smooth rough surfaces, and help protect the hive.

Appears on: Honey Bee History

Social wasps share a nest and cooperate in raising young. In yellowjacket and paper wasp colonies, reproductive females lay eggs and workers help feed the brood and maintain the nest. They can defend that nest, so observing a forager is different from approaching a colony.

Appears on: Aerial Yellowjacket, Bald-faced Hornet, Golden Paper Wasp, Wasps & Yellowjackets, Western Yellowjacket

A solitary wasp has no colony of workers helping raise her young. A female may stock her own nest cells with food, or find a host for her developing offspring. Solitary describes social life; parasitoid describes a feeding strategy. A wasp can be both.

Appears on: Black-and-yellow Mud Dauber, Ichneumon Wasps, Mason & Potter Wasps, Wasps & Yellowjackets

Varroa usually means the parasitic mite Varroa destructor. It feeds on developing and adult honey bees and helps spread viruses, making it one of the most serious threats in modern beekeeping.

Appears on: Honey Bee History

The waggle dance is a figure-eight movement performed by forager bees inside the hive to communicate the direction and distance of a food source to their nestmates. The angle of the straight run relative to vertical corresponds to the angle of the food source relative to the sun, and the duration of the waggle run indicates distance. First described in detail by Karl von Frisch, who received a Nobel Prize for the work in 1973, the waggle dance remains one of the most sophisticated non-human communication systems known.

Appears on: Honey Bees

Honey bee colonies survive winter by forming a tight cluster and generating metabolic heat together. Worker bees vibrate their flight muscles without moving their wings, producing warmth that keeps the cluster core around 80–95°F (27–35°C) even when outside temperatures drop well below freezing. The bees on the outer shell of the cluster insulate the interior, and bees rotate between the warm center and the cooler edges over time. This collective thermoregulation is one of the key adaptations that allows honey bee colonies to persist through cold winters rather than dying back like most other bee species.

Appears on: Honey Bees