Western Honeybee

Western honeybee is used to live in Europe, Africa, and Middle eastern. People has been breeding western honeybee to harvest honey from long ago, and since then western honeybee is treated as an important animal. The shape and character of the bees depend on the environment they live.
In Meiji Era in Japan, western honeybee was imported to harvest honey. Now you can find western honeybee almost all over in Japan. Western honeybee in Japan is categorized in Italian, whose abdomen is yellow.
In 1999 I visited Austria and Germany. The color of honeybees there was all black.

Queen of Apis mellifera	A German bee

Japanese Honeybee

Japanese honeybee originally lived in Japan.
Before western honeybee was imported in Japan, people in Kishu in Edo Era kept Japanese honeybee and harvest honey.

Queen of Apis cerana

Because we can obtain more honey from western honeybee than from Japanese honeybee, recently less and less Japanese honeybee was kept mainly in mountain area. Now the environment is changing by the development, Japanese honeybee is thought to be one of the endangered species.

How to distinguish?

The easiest way to distinguish Japanese honeybee and western honeybee is to compare the color of worker's abdomen.
If it is western honeybee, the color of two phases of the stomach next to the thorax is yellow.
But in summer, Japanese honeybee also gets yellow. So if you want to distinguish more correctly, you should look at the line of rear wing.
(Please look at the chart: left , Japanese and right, Western)

Apis cerana	Apis mellifera

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