When we think of bees in action, we often default to thinking about honey bees. The term honey bee is really the common name for an entire category of biological classification known as the genus Apis under which there are multiple bee species that produce honey. Here at Big Island Bees, our beekeepers work with the European honey bee—the most common honey bee and one of only two domesticated honey bee species. Each hive can produce upwards of two hundred to three hundred pounds of honey. With twenty-five hundred hives that can be upwards of half a million pounds of honey in a single year!  But high production of honey is actually a rare quality for a bee, as most other species of bees produce little to no honey at all. In fact, there are thousands of types of bees that are not classified as honey bees and that you might not even recognize as a bee at all (which I have a personal story I’ll tell you about this below). Of the 20,000 species of bees found around the world, less than 4% produce honey and less than 8% produce conglomerative social nests (beehives) like our European honey bees. Most species of bees are actually solitary or sub-solitary, coming together for mating and reproduction and gathering just enough resources to feed themselves and few young throughout the productive season. Which Types of Bees Make Honey in the U.S.? Only about 4,000 of the world’s bee species are native to the United States, of which not a single one is known for producing honey! That may seem unbelievable given the millions of colonies of honey bees that exist in North America today, but it’s true—all the honey bee species we encounter in our backyards or that produce our honey in North America were introduced to the region by European settlers. While we may not have any native honey producing bees in the U.S., we don’t need to travel far to find some. Mexico and Central America, are known for having 16 unique species of what we commonly call stingless honey bees or scientifically call the genus Melipona—a large category of bees separate from our familiar honey bees that is also known for making honey. Do All Stingless Bees Make Honey? Again, stingless is a common term that generally refers to Melipona bees, however there are also other types of bees that cannot sting. This includes many solitary bee species and even certain bees within a sting-able species, such as drone (male) honey bees. The stingless bee Melipona is well known for its highly-prized honey in many parts of the tropics. Although they do not produce as much honey as the European honey bee, these stingless bees produce enough to feed their hive with a small amount of surplus for tasting. They can be found in the wild and are also kept by local beekeepers in regions where they are native. My Personal Quest For The Mexican Stingless Honey Bee I was fortunate to have the opportunity to taste the rare stingless honey bee honey myself on a recent trip to Mexico. To be honest, it was more of a quest; I was in pursuit of a stingless bee species unique to the very area I was visiting. My first step was to scout out a local beekeeper. I chose a