The Honeybee Genome Sequencing Consortium. The honeybee is the key model for social behavior and is essential to global ecology through pollination. This bee is more similar than other insects to vertebrates for circadian rhythm (among other characteristics), has more genes (170) for odorant receptors, and has novel genes for nectar and pollen use. The mystery is how creatures as tiny as worker bees, with brains only a millionth in number of neurons as humans, can do so many tasks and integrate them so well. Well-known is the waggle dance in which foraging workers returning to the hive can run figures-of-eight on the surfaces of combs and thereby transmit information to other bees about direction of target plants and distance from the hive. They can also communicate whether more or fewer bees are needed to exploit pollen sources. Worker bees have extraordinary memory capacities

This honey bee species apparently orginated in Africa