Honeybee

The honeybee is a bug in the. The honeybee first appeared in and has appeared in all subsequent games. It is a small insect that can be heard buzzing around. They are very common, but should not be confused with the wasp (referred to as the bee prior to ), a closely-related species that is found in trees. An important difference from the wasp is that they do not sting the player.

In the games that the honeybee appears in, it is an uncommon bug that the player can encounter, and can be found around flowers, sometimes settling on them. In, it can be caught from spring to the middle of summer.

Donating to the museum
As with all insects in the, the honeybee can be donated to the museum followed by a small talk by Blathers, the curator.

In
The curator of the museum, Blathers, will accept the honeybee as a donation to the insect exhibit. He will talk about the honeybee briefly before accepting it:

The honeybee can be found at the middle-left side of the first room of the bugs section, on the flowers.

In
Blathers will talk about the honeybee with disgust again in -

It can be found in the lower-left section of the exhibit, buzzing among the roses.

In
Upon being donated, the honeybee can be found in the first room of the bug exhibit flying around and resting on the bushes near the back of the room. The exhibit has this to say about the honeybee:

In
Once donated to the museum, the honeybee can be found on the tropical flower bed near the man-faced stink bug and the mantis.

Real-world information
Apis mellifera, the European honeybee, is a species of honeybee that is used frequently around the world to produce honey. There are many subspecies of this bee due to human intervention. This breed of honeybee originated from Africa. Like the in-game wasp and most species of bee, the European honeybee is capable of delivering a venomous sting, though this does not occur in-game. Unlike these other species, the European honeybee's stinger is barbed, causing the bee to fatally disembowel itself when the stinger is caught in the target's skin, leaving behind a sac that continues to envenomate the target until the stinger is removed. Despite being omnivorous, the European honeybee preys on microbes rather than other insects; consequently, stinging is used exclusively to protect against perceived threats.

The European honeybee has been subject to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), an unexplained phenomenon in which all worker bees leave their colony and die, leaving the hive without any means of supporting itself.