Researchers believe that the original habitats of the honey bee are
tropical climates and heavily forested areas. Honey bees can thrive in
natural or domesticated environments, though they prefer to live in
gardens, woodlands, orchards, meadows and other areas where flowering
plants are abundant. Within their natural habitat, honey bees build
nests inside tree cavities and under edges of objects to hide themselves
from predators.
Many people believe that honey bees originated in Africa and spread
to northern Europe, eastern India, China and the Americas. However,
because honey bees have been domesticated to produce honey for human
consumption, they are now found all over the world in different
habitats.
Honey bees in temperate climates, such as European honey bees, store
larger amounts of honey than other subspecies, as they need to maintain a
certain temperature inside the nest to survive during winter. Bees
living in these climates adapt well to their environment only when
workers have created a large nest with well-insulated interiors. To
collect enough honey for the next winter, foragers swarm early in the
spring.
Because honey bees in tropical habitats, such as African honey bees,
do not experience long weeks of cold weather, they do not need to build
large and well-insulated nests, produce thousands of workers or store
large amounts of honey. For a honey bee in a tropical habitat, swarming
depends largely on the abundance of food sources, rather than seasonal
factors. However, regardless of living in tropical or temperate
climates, honey bees maintain their hives with a constant temperature of
90 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit.
During winter, honey bees consume honey and use their metabolic heat
to provide warmth to all individuals of a colony. On the contrary, honey
bees use the liquid from stored nectar as an evaporative coolant during
warmer seasons. These methods ensure that seasonal changes do not
affect their interior habitats.
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