But it is correct to spell it as two words like House fly, and bumble bee. Apis mellifera L. is the scientific name for the honey bee. The honey bee is an insect. As a member of the order Hymenoptera, the honey bee is related to wasps, and ants but is classified in the superfamily Apoidea. Apoidea have some interesting characteristic which separate them from other Hymenoptera such as yellow jackets which are sometimes mistaken for honey bees.
Honey bees use pollen and nectar from plants as the sole source of food.
They have a relation not only to agriculture, but to the conservation of wildlife and game management, and constitute an important element in the various ecologic factors that combine to form our environment. Thus the production of fruit crops such as apples, pears, melons, cucumbers, grapes, dewberries, huckleberries and strawberries, as well as cotton and various seed crops such as alfalfa, several clovers, vetch, onion, asparagus, buckwheat and celery, are dependent upon a sufficient population of bees, either the domesticated honey bee or some of our native, wild, solitary or social species. Apis mellifera L. is not a native bee. Most Apis mellifera L. in what is now the United States were called German black bees but that began to change with the introduction of Italian bees into the United States in the 1860's. Most of the honey bees seen on flowering plants today are golden banded bees and thus are commonly mistaken when yellow jackets invade fairgrounds, back yard picnics, and pop cans to get the sweet sugars and get blamed for the bad manners of the yellow jacket.