honeybee

/ˌhʌniˈbi/

/ˈhʌnibi/

Other forms: honeybees

Honeybees are the winged insects that beekeepers like best, because they naturally produce extra honey and can be raised to produce the sweet, sticky stuff.

Honeybees, as their name implies, make a lot of honey, storing surplus amounts in their waxy hives. Humans have domesticated two species of honeybee, raising them for the extra honey they produce. You can tell the difference between a bumblebee, which is native to North America, and a honeybee, native to Africa, Asia, and Europe, by comparing their bodies. Honeybees are slim, with a distinct head, while bumblebees are fat and fuzzy.

Definitions of honeybee

1. noun

   social bee often domesticated for the honey it produces
   synonyms: Apis mellifera

   types:

   Africanized bee, Africanized honey bee, Apis mellifera adansonii, Apis mellifera scutellata, killer bee

   a strain of bees that originated in Brazil in the 1950s as a cross between an aggressive African bee and a honeybee; retains most of the traits of the African bee; now spread as far north as Texas

   German bee, black bee

   dark-colored ill-tempered honeybee supposedly of German origin

   Carniolan bee

   greyish highly productive European honeybee that has a quiet disposition

   Italian bee

   yellowish honeybee resembling the Carniolan bee in its habits

   type of:

   bee

   any of numerous hairy-bodied insects including social and solitary species