On a podcast episode of Stuff You Should Know, they discussed honey bees. They mentioned that there is mainly one species used for harvesting: apis mellifera. But there are various races of these bees. What defines a race and what distinguishes them as the same species?

Question

On a podcast episode of Stuff You Should Know, they discussed honey bees. They mentioned that there is mainly one species used for harvesting: apis mellifera. But there are various races of these bees. What defines a race and what distinguishes them as the same species?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Race is a weird thing in taxonomy. It’s not really well defined. So I would say it’s more like a terminology beekeepers use rather than a scientifically well defined classification.