The first honey bees introduced from Europe were black German bees. The common Ohio variety of honey bee is the Italian, which is a golden-brown and black bee covered with short, dense hair. The forepart of the abdomen is yellow and there is some yellow between the four brown bands on the rest of the abdomen. The Caucasian variety, a mild-tempered bee, is dark, and its abdomen is banded with gray. The carniolan is a gray bee similar in appearance to Caucasian.
Most people see only the workers, which regularly fly in and out of the nest.
The queen is the only female in the colony capable of laying fertilized eggs. She is extremely important, because without her no young bees would be replacing the old bees as they die. The rest of the bees pay a lot of attention to her. There is only one queen to each bee colony, and she may live two to five years. She must be fed by the others in the colony, and she can do none of the rest of the chores that need to be accomplished to make honey and keep a clean nest.