The bee most Americans picture, striped, social, and heavy with honey, was not originally from here.

When European colonists crossed the Atlantic in the early 1600s, they brought with them the familiar honeybee, the European honey bee (Apis mellifera). One of the earliest documented introductions was in Virginia in 1622, when hives were brought over for honey, beeswax, and to help pollinate crops.

To the people already living on this continent, the insect was something new. Some Native American communities gave it a name that quietly captured the larger story unfolding around them: “the white man’s fly.” The phrase reflected both the bee’s foreign origin and the way it often appeared ahead of expanding European settlement, moving steadily westward.

The honeybee’s arrival did not mark the beginning of pollination in America, only the arrival of a new kind of pollinator.

The continent was already humming with native pollinators: bumblebees, mason bees, leafcutter bees, carpenter bees, sweat bees, and thousands of other species. Most lived very differently from the imported honeybee. Many were solitary, nesting quietly in soil, hollow stems, or old wood. They did not build large communal hives or produce surplus honey, but they had been pollinating the continent’s plants for millions of years.