The superfamily Apoidea is a major group within the Hymenoptera, which includes two traditionally-recognized lineages, the "sphecoid" wasps, and the bees, who appear to be their descendants.

Nomenclature

Bees appear in recent classifications to be a specialized lineage of crabronid wasps that switched to the use of pollen and nectar as larval food, rather than insect prey; this presumably makes Crabronidae a paraphyletic group. Accordingly, bees and sphecoids are now all grouped together in a single superfamily, and the older available name is "Apoidea" rather than "Sphecoidea" (which, like Spheciformes, has been used in the past, but also defined a paraphyletic group and has been abandoned).

As the bees themselves (not including their wasp ancestors) are still considered a monophyletic group, it is still convenient to use a grouping between superfamily and family to unify all bees. A few recent classifications have addressed this problem by lumping all bee families together into a single large family Apidae, though this has not met with widespread acceptance. The alternative classification in more common use is to unite all bees under the name Anthophila (Engel, 2005), which is equivalent to the obsolete name Apiformes (which meant bee-like forms in Latin).

External links

• All Living Things Images, identification guides, and maps of Apoidea.
• Solitary BeesPopular introduction to the Hymenoptera Apoidea.
• Fiori e Api d'Albore and IntoppaFlower visiting bees in Europe pdf. In Italian but excellent table with Latin names.

References

• Engel, M.S. (2005). Family-group names for bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea). American Museum Novitates 3476: 1-33.
• Michener, C.D. (2000). The Bees of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press.

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