The honey bee, Apis mellifera, became the official state insect in 1983 (Utah Code). The bill was introduced by Senator Fred W. Finlinson (R-Murray) due to the lobbying efforts of a Ridgecrest Elementary School fifth grade class in Salt Lake County as part of a class study project on the insect and on how state government works. Governor Scott Matheson signed the bill into law on March 16, 1983.

The honey bee is significant in Utah history, as Utah was first called by its Mormon settlers, “The Provisional State of Deseret.” Deseret means honey bee in the language of the Jaredites, an ancient people found in the Book of Mormon. When Utah became a territory in 1850, the Mormons were unsuccessful in their attempt to have the name “Deseret” retained. Honey bees were introduced to the Salt Lake Valley in 1848 and there is no evidence that the honey bee existed west of the Rocky Mountains until settlers imported them.

The western honey bee or European honey bee (Apis mellifera) is the most common of the 7–12 species of honey bee worldwide. The genus name Apis is Latin for “bee”, and mellifera is the Latin for “honey-bearing”, referring to the species’s production of honey for the winter. Like all honey bees, the western honey bee is eusocial, creating colonies with a single fertile female (or “queen”), many normally non-reproductive females or “workers,” and a small proportion of fertile males or “drones.” Individual colonies can house tens of thousands of bees. Colony activities are organized by complex communication between individuals, through both pheromones and the dance language. The western honey bee was one of the first domesticated insects, and it is the primary species maintained by beekeepers to this day for both its honey production and pollination activities. With human assistance, the western honey bee now occupies every continent except Antarctica. Because of its wide cultivation, this species is the single most important pollinator for agriculture globally. Honey bees are threatened by pests and diseases, especially the varroa mite and colony collapse disorder. Western honey bees are an important model organism in scientific studies, particularly in the fields of social evolution, learning, and memory; they are also used in studies of pesticide toxicity, to assess non-target impacts of commercial pesticides. Description courtesy of Wikipedia

Scientific Classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Hymenoptera
Family: Apidae
Clade: Corbiculata
Tribe: Apini
Genus: Apis
Type Species: Apis mellifera

Is it spelled honey bee or honeybee? Entomologist Robert Snodgrass states that the correct usage necessitates two words because it is a kind or type of bee, honey bee. Robert E. Snodgrass (1984). Anatomy of the Honey Bee. Cornell University Press. (p. vii)