Are bees native to north america?

Question

Are bees native to north america?

Answer 1

Yes, there are many species of native north American bees. However, there are no north American honey bees. Honey bees make up only a few of the over 20,000 species  of bees. There are some native American bees that produce a bit of honey, but they are not considered to be true honey bees.

Answer 2

Bees are all over the world as far as I know. Some farmers are having to import bees from other countries to keep their crops pollinated due to the missing honeybee problems.

Saw a video on missing honeybee problems in Germany.

Answer 3

Bees are native to North American

but Honey Bees are not.

The bee that is known to produce honey and is used by bee keepers and is sent to pollinate crops is the European Honey Bee, an Apis type bee.  These are the types of bees that build the wax honeycomb structure we are all so familiar with.

The so called Killer Bee was a cross breed between the European Honey Bee and the African Bee.  The African Bee produced more honey, but it was more aggressive; the idea was to breed out the aggression instead it increased the aggression of the honey bee population.

According to Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee

"Bees are flying insects closely related to wasps and ants. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamily Apoidea, presently classified by the unranked taxon name Anthophila. There are nearly 20,000 known species of bee, in nine recognized families, though many are undescribed and the actual number is probably higher. They are found on every continent except Antarctica, in every habitat on the planet that contains insect-pollinated flowering plants.:"

According to Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_bee

"There are no honey bees native to the Americas. In 1622, European colonists brought the dark bee (A. m. mellifera) to the Americas, followed later by Italian bees (A. m. ligustica) and others."

This article starts out:

"Honey bees (or honeybees) are a subset of bees, primarily distinguished by the production and storage of honey and the construction of perennial, colonial nests out of wax. Honey bees are the only extant members of the tribe Apini, all in the genus Apis. Currently, there are only seven recognized species of honey bee with a total of 44 subspecies (Engel, 1999) though historically, anywhere from six to eleven species have been recognized. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the approximately 20,000 known species of bees. Some other types of related bees produce and store honey, but only members of the genus Apis are true honey bees."