Dwarf honey bee, Red dwarf honey bee
The dwarf honey bee (or red dwarf honey bee), Apis florea, is one of two species of small, wild honey bees of southern and southeastern Asia. It has a much wider distribution than its sister species, Apis andreniformis. First identified in the late 18th century, Apis florea is unique for its morphology, foraging behavior and defensive mechanisms like making a piping noise. Apis florea have open nests and small colonies, which makes them more susceptible to predation than cavity nesters with large numbers of defensive workers. These honey bees are important pollinators and therefore commodified in countries like Cambodia.
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TerrestrialTerrestrial animals are animals that live predominantly or entirely on land (e.g., cats, ants, snails), as compared with aquatic animals, which liv...
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OviparousOviparous animals are female animals that lay their eggs, with little or no other embryonic development within the mother. This is the reproductive...
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starts withA. florea is called the dwarf honey bee due to its small size compared to other honeybees. A worker is typically 7–10 mm in body length and its overall coloration is red-brown. A colony builds a single, exposed comb usually on tree branches or shrubs. A. florea produce honey that is harvested and eaten in Thailand and Cambodia. They are excellent pollinators, which gives them an important ecological role in the places they inhabit. Drones carry a thumb-like bifurcation called the basitarsus, which is located two-thirds along the length of the tibia. The fimbriate lobe of A. florea has three protrusions and they sting using two stylet barbs.
Apis florea and its sister species together comprise the subgenus Micrapis, and are the most primitive of the living species of Apis, reflected in their small colony size, and simple nest construction. The exposed single combs are built on branches of shrubs and small trees. The forager bees do not perform a gravity-oriented waggle dance on the vertical face of the comb to recruit nestmates as in the domesticated Apis mellifera and other species. Instead, they perform the dance on the horizontal upper surface where the comb wraps around the supporting branch. The dance is a straight run pointing directly to the source of pollen or nectar the forager has been visiting. The distinctiveness of the two species A. florea and A. andreniformis was established unequivocally in the 1990s. A. florea is redder and old workers always have a red first abdomen (younger workers are paler in colour, as is the case in giant honey bees); A. andreniformis is generally darker and the first abdomen segment is completely black in old bees. Distinguishing characteristics of the dwarf honey bees are outlined below:
A. florea spans the continents of Asia and Africa and is most commonly seen in Southeastern Asia (Thailand), the Northeastern part of India, China, and forested regions of the Middle East. A. florea reach a decision about a new nesting site via dancing. They decide on a site when the largest number of individuals dance in the direction of the new site. The workers use an auditory signal of piping to indicate a decision about a new site has been reached, with the top of the swarm lifting off into the air first, followed by the bottom of the swarm and then the middle reaching the air last, but all within one minute of the swarm’s initial lift off. Since dancing is a common mechanism of communicating about a new nesting site in both A. florea and A. mellifera, it is suggested that this form of nest site selection evolved in the common ancestor of Apis. However, A. florea do not re-evaluate a site before several individuals move to the new site like A. mellifera does. Instead, swarms travel to the new site as a group and leave to a new site if it is later discovered to be unsuitable. This makes searching for new sites a much faster process for A. florea, but not necessarily more accurate.
Apis florea are found in southeastern Asian countries, especially in Thailand, Iran, Oman, United Arab Emirates, India, Myanmar, and some parts of China, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Since 1985 Apis florea is also found in Sudan. They live in forest habitats but they are also pollinators of tropical fruit crops in Thailand. Apis florea build exposed nests always with a single comb on a single branch. If they are building a new nest near to the old one, they salvage the wax from the old nest. Other species of honeybee do not exhibit this behavior, perhaps because of the risk of contaminating pathogens. This behavior is only observed in this species. Even within the species this behavior differs, the colonies that migrate less than 200 meters engage in wax recycling, but the colonies that migrate longer distances do not.
Aside from their small size, simple exposed nests and simplified dance language, the lifecycle and behavior of this species is fairly similar to other species of Apis. Workers of A. florea, like those of the species A. mellifera, also engage in worker policing, a process where nonqueen eggs are removed from the hive. Queenless A. florea colonies have been observed to merge with nearby queen-right A. florea colonies, suggesting workers are attracted to queen bee pheromones.
Apis florea can migrate to a variety of diverse locations due to human introduction or of their own volition. It poses a threat to native insects like Apis mellifera because they compete for the same resources.
As social bees, A. florea require a mechanism of communication, especially when conveying important spatial information about foraging, including direction and distance. The time elapsed during the waggle phase when a dancer moves forward while shaking the abdomen from side to side indicates the distance to a site. The longer the waggle phase, the longer the distance to a site and vice versa. In order to indicate direction, A. florea workers orient the waggle phase in the direction of the site, while dancing on the crow of the nest or swarm. The precision of dance does not depend on the type of site i.e. nest sites or food patches. In other words, A. florea do not change the precision of the waggle dance to indicate a goal is a nest site or food patch, unlike A. mellifera, which do change precision when conveying information about food patches specifically. This suggests that A. florea do not prioritize nesting site nor food patch information by changing the precision of dance.
A. florea adults eat primarily honey and nectar but also feed the brood on pollen. Future queens are fed royal jelly and are reared in larger cells so they become larger.
A. florea adopt the open-comb branch site as an information center for foraging. The branch platforms serves as a location for bee dancing that conveys important foraging information to other bees. They are commonly seen foraging near branches and small bushes. They mainly forage for pollen and nectar as food sources as well as water and safety from predators. Their frequent foraging and long migration range displays their high degree of mobility. They tend to build combs at lower elevations, away from direct sunlight and on the peripheral side of plant branches. A. florea forage openly, unlike A. cerana that mostly forage in parts of the hive that are not visible. Dialect observed in A. florea does not correlate with foraging range. A. florea tend to have longer foraging durations when compared to other bees in this genus, perhaps because they require smaller territories at lower altitudes and build open-combs on branches or twigs. Their small size necessitates more time to forage for pollen or nectar because they have a limit on how much food they can carry. Therefore, it is worth the cost of foraging for a longer duration if it means gaining the benefit of a highly nutritious food source.
In a single patriline, more workers mean the colony will produce more drones. High mating frequency in A. florea has been evolutionarily selected for as observed in other members of the genus. The average lifespan of a drone is 15.6 days, ranging from 6–41 days. The queen has a much longer lifespan consistent with the longevity of the colony. A. florea have workers that police to ensure that workers’ eggs are destroyed at twice the rate of queens’ eggs using oophagy. The queens’ eggs are marked as to avoid destruction by worker bees. Since this behavior is also observed in A. mellifera, this suggests that policing mechanism behaviors evolved before the divergence of the genus Apis.
When a queen mates, the sperm is transferred into the spermatheca directly. Specifically, A. florea females produce no mucus as a sign of mating, unlike A. mellifera queens. A. florea males use a clasper organ at the hindleg to hold the queen’s leg during mating. Anatomical studies support the hypothesis that A. florea mate via direct sperm transfer. A. florea queens typically mate with 3-4 males. A. florea mate with fewer drones than A. mellifera. A. mellifera queens mate with as many as 25 drones and simply deposit spermatozoa in the oviducts of the queen, where only 10% of spermatozoa reach the spermatheca. Thus, A. florea use the more energetically efficient method of sperm transfer.
A. florea have two main interactions with humans: hunting and tourism. In Asia, there is widespread hunting of these bees because they are harmless to humans and they also have social and cultural significance to the two main religions in Asia: Hindu and Buddhism. In Hindu culture, the honey from such bees represents “the blendedness of everything” and is served with other ingredients in a variety of traditional ceremonies. In Buddhist culture, gifting honey to fellow monks is considered equal to giving alms, one of the most expressive ways that one can reward a good deed. In addition to being widely hunted and holding high cultural value, honey hunting sites are considered tourist sites in places like Nepal. Increased deforestation due to industrialization has enhanced bee migration to areas which are less populated, thus human interaction is mainly limited to fairly rural regions of Asia.
