Giant honey bee
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Giant honey bee ( Apis dorsata ) |
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| Apis dorsata | ||||||||||||
| Fabricius , 1798 |
The giant honey bee ( Apis dorsata ) is the second largest representative of the eight species of the honey bee genus found in Asia . The circulation area is India (Assam) and Southeast Asia . The closely related cliff honey bee as the largest known species of honey bees, with which Apis dorsata forms the subgenus Megapis (Ashmead 1904), is classified by other scientists as a subspecies (race) of the giant honey bee .
Taxonomy
The taxonomic integration of the giant honey bee, its subspecies and in particular the status of the cliff honey bee is difficult and controversial between different scientists. According to a fundamental publication by Michael S. Engel (1999), the cliff honey bee is not an independent species, but only a subspecies (breed) of Apis dorsata . In addition to the cliff honey bee Apis dorsata laboriosa, Engel identifies the following subspecies of the giant honey bee :
- Apis dorsata dorsata (common in India)
- Apis dorsata binghami Cockerell (Indonesian Risenhonigbiene, common in Malaysia and Indonesia )
- Apis dorsata breviligula Maa (common in the Philippines )
For the cliff honey bee, the previous Latin name Apis laboriosa and not Apis dorsata laboriosa is still used in many recent publications . In addition, z. B. Arias and Sheppard reintroduced the cliff honey bee as an independent species based on recent studies of mitochondrial DNA.
description
A single bee is the size of a European hornet . The female workers have a partly amber abdomen, the queen is black. The peoples live in large colonies without any protection in the open air. Its distribution area is India (Assam) and Southeast Asia . The bee has a very high need for food and an unusual annual cycle that includes two major productive breeding seasons and two approximately three-week migration periods.
The animals build nests consisting of a single honeycomb with a diameter of one meter or more, preferably high up under thick, mostly horizontal branches in the tallest trees, under overhanging cliffs, but also on buildings. The brood in the open honeycomb is protected only by a dense layer of bees sitting on it, as is the case with the smallest bee species, the dwarf bush bee ( Apis andreniformis ). The giant honey bee usually reacts very aggressively to disturbances in the vicinity of the nest and has an effective defensive behavior. In addition to the sting, the bees sitting on the honeycomb can also create wavy line or spiral patterns by the bees folding down their wings and abdomen one after the other. This has a deterrent effect on approaching predators, but also distributes pheromones horizontally in the microclimate in and just above the layer of bees, which is not protected from winds by an external boundary. This bee can tolerate high humidity, rain, drought and cold well, but is susceptible to food shortages.
Annual cycle
This species has an unusual annual cycle for bees that is comparable to that of migratory birds. In north-east Indian areas, the mountain forests of the Himalayas , it colonizes so-called bee trees between April and November , in which several dozen colonies often create very large nests, which are used for a long breeding phase and the formation of new swarms. The same trees to which the peoples seem bound for many decades are always used as bee trees . However, not all colonies participate in this nesting form. Drones of Apis dorsata start in this northern settlement area to their mating flights to sunset and meet usually 25-30 feet above the ground directly below the top, spreading branches of towering over the rest of the forest trees.
At the beginning of the monsoon rainy season , the bees stop breeding and start a migration phase a few days to weeks after the onset of rain. Since this type of bee copes very well with heavy showers and also with drought and cold, it is assumed that the migration activity is related to the low activity of the flowering plants during the rainfall. The bees have a very high need for food, which can no longer be met after the few remaining flowers have been harvested. They no longer find suitable conditions in the vicinity of the beehive trees. On the journey, the entire honey supply is carried in the honey stomachs and is largely metabolized and used up on the first day of hiking. The large wax honeycomb is left behind and is often used by other visitors, including mainly monkeys, wild pigs and humans ( beeswax as a raw material ). Old nesting sites are not available for the bee to colonize again. These bees also leave the nest very easily outside of the migration period, for example if the comb is mechanically destroyed by harvest workers or predators.
The hike begins in the morning with a very large swarm formation, in which all colonies of a bee tree take part and which leads on unspecified hiking trails, mostly along the river valleys to the south into the marshland of the Brahmaputra . The colonies always start together, but then form smaller groups of several peoples up to single swarms that settle down separately to rest. The approximately three-week hike is divided into hiking days and then usually a few rest days . On hiking days, the animals cover up to 10 kilometers and look for resting places in the evening. As is typical for bees, orientation on site takes place via track bees and waggle dance , with which a goal is identified in the mornings of hiking days. The new resting place is already determined before each flight day. It has not yet been clarified why the swarms prefer resting places in the immediate vicinity of people, human settlements, houses or farm buildings. They get used to the presence of humans within the first day, but they always represent a considerable danger and, in the event of improper behavior, can certainly attack and kill people. Residents whose huts are haunted by bees wait for the time, because the bees will move on safely. The bees form a solid cluster of swarms during the resting days, preferably near the ground, without building a honeycomb. The rest serves primarily to replace the food that has been consumed and is shorter, the faster the bees can replenish the supplies they carry with them. With adequate flowering, this only takes one day. A single bee can visit up to 5000 flowers per day and collect up to 20 grams of nectar, which is passed on to the nestmates. Since no brood is kept during the migration, the number of individuals is constantly decreasing.
Arrived in the swampy landscape of Brahmaputra (Assam), fixed bee trees are visited again at the beginning of December, nests are created and breeding activities are started for a period of about four months. These trees are also always the same . All traveling swarms meet there within a few days. It is not clear how the bees know which trees are bee trees and how to find them, because apart from the queen no other bee lives long enough to be able to remember a previous annual cycle. However, the queen does not take part in tracking flights, and young queens also find the tree unerringly. The swarms always manage to arrive there almost at the same time. For humans, bee trees do not differ from other, apparently equally suitable trees that are found in large numbers in the area. The colonies are often very densely packed next to each other along the branches. However, not all colonies go to bee trees. In this productive phase, too, individual nests occur near human dwellings and also near the ground.
During the breeding phase, a swarm can grow by up to 100 individuals per day and the combs expand quickly. Bombax trees, a genus of wool tree plants that are in bloom at this time and give honey a typical aroma, serve as a natural source of food . Mustard is also available as a rich source of food, which plays an important role in regional agriculture and blooms within three weeks after sowing. The bee is indispensable for pollinating the mustard. In March, the dry season sets in in this landscape , in which the flowering of the Bombax comes to a standstill. The bees then begin a second three-week migration north and complete their annual cycle.
Enemies
Apart from humans, this species hardly has any enemies from the mammalian field due to its aggressive and dangerous behavior. Natural enemies are some predatory wasp species and bee-eaters , including the bluebeard spint in particular , which specializes in this species in the northern range. It flies close to the nests and provokes harmless stings in the plumage, in which the bees get stuck with their approx. 3 mm long spines. Then he moves away from the activity area of the nests, picks the animals from their plumage and removes the spines before eating. It also visits abandoned nests and eats abandoned brood, honey scraps and wax. The larger honey buzzards also rob fully occupied nests, as their plumage also prevents the stings. Some species of weaver ants use dead or dying bees under the trees as food for their brood. Mammals stay away from the bee trees. Monkeys occasionally eat abandoned honey-bearing single nests, because bees quickly leave their honeycomb behind if there is a smell of fire or mechanical disturbance. In the dry season in particular, there are vegetation fires that lead to the abandonment and occasionally also to the complete destruction of honeycombs close to the ground.
Humans and giant honeybees
Bee trees are considered sacred by the local population and are an object of worship. Small shrines are often created for religious or natural religious activities. The locations of the bee trees are kept secret from strangers. The honey is also used for spiritual purposes.
There is an old tradition of harvesting honey from these wild bees with their nests that are mostly visible from afar. The process is known as honey hunting and is not without risk . The use of smoke and swaddling towels is often the only protection against the bites. The harvest worker climbs to a great height, approaches very carefully, cuts off the freely hanging honeycomb, puts it in a basket and lets it down with a rope. The bees follow the honeycomb and must be scattered by smoke below. Because of the high level of aggressiveness and the lack of protective clothing, the art of honey hunters is to avoid the attack through very careful actions so that none of the guard bees recognize him as a honey thief and release the signal substances necessary for the attack. If this happens anyway, the bees from the neighboring nests usually also participate. Accidents occur when honey hunters cannot move away quickly enough at high altitude, panic and fall. The honey is considered valuable and has a very typical aroma in the southern areas that goes back to the Bombax flower. In the northern areas it is similar to tropical mixed honey of varying quality.
literature
- Friedrich Ruttner: Natural history of honey bees . Franckh Kosmos Verlag, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-440-09125-2 .
- Nikolaus Koeniger, Gudrun Koeniger, Salim Tingek: Competition or harmonious coexistence? The honey bees of Southeast Asia. In: ADIZ. 6/2006, p. 12ff.
- Nikolaus Koeniger, Gudrun Koeniger, Salim Tingek: Honey Bees of Borneo . Expae Center of Apis Diversity, Natural History Publications (Borneo), 2010, ISBN 978-983-812-128-6 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ MS Engel (1999): The taxonomy of recent and fossil honey bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Apis ). Journal of Hymenoptera Research 8 (2): 165-196.
- ^ Maria C. Arias, Walter S. Sheppard (2005): Phylogenetic relationships of honey bees (Hymenoptera: Apinae: Apini) inferred from nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 37, (1): 25-35. doi : 10.1016 / j.ympev.2005.02.017 . Erratum in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40 (1): 315. doi : 10.1016 / j.ympev.2006.02.002
- ↑ Paul Reddish: Assam - In the land of the bee trees. ORF Universum, 1999, DVD 2007.