Honey bees are related to a whole bunch of other insects. They are part of Hymenoptera order, one of the largest in the insect world with more than 130,000, and the suborder Apocrita, which includes all bees, ants, and wasps. All have similar bodies and all have ocelli, extra primitive eyes that augment their two main eyes by tracking gradations of light and not much else. The only difference is that bees and wasps have three; ants have only the two on either side of their heads and not the one centered in front of their main eyes.
Bees: At last count, there are 20,000 known bee species. Not all sting and only a few produce and store honey. A few of them, called vulture bees, eat dead things, but most live off plant matter. The majority of bees are solitary; those that are social usually gather in colonies of a few dozen; bumblebees gather in groups of 50–200 with minimal housing and no provisions for the winter. The honey bee is the only one with colonies that number in the 10,000s and that overwinter as a group.
Ants: Not all of the 20,000 ant species have huge colonies—some live in small groups of a few dozen. Like honey bees, most ants live in a large colony that consists of a queen, a handful of male drones kept for mating purposes, and tens of thousands of sterile female workers. Ants have colonized almost everywhere in the world except a few unpromising islands and Antarctica. Many people assume that termites are closely related to ants, but they're closer to cockroaches and mantids.
Wasps: A funny classification in that a wasp is defined as “any members of the suborder that are neither bees nor ants.” Over 100,000 species strong, wasps are the oldest grouping of the three, from which both ants and bees evolved. Although wasps include hornets, yellow jackets, and other picnic annoyances, the bulk of them are useful in that they prey on pest insects, making them valuable for natural bio-control of crop destroyers.