Honey Bee, Apis mellifera, Drone
Apis mellifera, drone, side view. The Drone or male of the honeybee. Note the eyes, they actually meet on top of the head. It lives only do mate with a virgin queen and the expanded compound eyes help. Note the weak reflection of the female's heavily modified hind tibia, still expanded, but not really functionally, probably a molecularly cheap byproduct of being haploid. Collected from a colony in Talbot County, Maryland by Tim McMahon. The western honey bee or European honey bee (Apis mellifera) is a species of honey bee. It has a defined social caste system and complex communication behaviors, such as intricate dance routines to indicate food availability. It is frequently maintained by beekeepers for its honey product. This species is widely distributed and an important pollinator for agriculture, though it is currently threatened by colony collapse disorder. It is also an important organism for scientific studies on social insects, especially as it now has a fully sequenced genome. Photographed in Talbot County, Maryland, September 30, 2013.
Size: 4200px × 3254px
Photo credit: © Photo Researchers / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: 2010s, 2013, 21st, animal, apidae, apis, arthropod, arthropoda, bearing, bee, century, close-, drone, european, fauna, honey, honey-bearing, honeybee, hymenoptera, insect, insecta, inventory, lab, macro, macrography, macrophotography, male, mellifera, monitoring, photography, photomacrography, side, sp., usgs, view, western
