This is a Western honeybee (Apis mellifera).

Despite our love of honeybees for honey production, crop pollination and so on, it’s important to remember that they’re not native to Dominica or the Caribbean. They’re an introduced species. This one is feral but its ancestors would have been imported and managed in hives.

There are actually bees that are native to Dominica, one of which is thought to be endemic – Hylaeus (Hylaeana) dominicalis, but native bees seem to be poorly studied and understood, and we don’t know much at all about the impact of introduced honeybees on native populations, or how ecosystems are affected.

In this photo that I took in my garden this afternoon, you can clearly see the orange pollen basket on the hind legs – a signature trait of honeybees. There were about 20 individuals foraging on cosmos flowers in the late afternoon.

There’s an interesting article in the Guardian newspaper (18 Sept 2025) called “The island that banned hives: can honeybees actually harm nature?” that describes an attempt to measure the impact of honeybees on native bee populations.