Asian red honey bee
| Asian red honey bee | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Apis koschevnikovi | ||||||||||||
| Buttel-Reepen , 1906 |
The Asian red honey bee ( Apis koschevnikovi ), also known as the red honey bee , is one of the eight Asian types of honey bees ( Apis ). It occurs on Borneo , Java , Sumatra , on the Malay Peninsula and in southern Thailand . Since it is dependent on intact rainforests, it still occurs mainly in Borneo today.
features
The red honey bee is very similar to the eastern honey bee ( Apis cerana ), but is about 10 to 15% larger. Workers reach a length of about 7 to 10 millimeters. The basic color is reddish, the labrum , the metanotum and the underside of the abdomen are amber to gold in color. The legs are yellowish. The wings are somewhat smoky in color. The cubital index is large and very variable. The drones have a hairy border on the outer edge of the tibia and the basal tarsus . The sexual organs are also built differently than those of the Eastern honey bee.
Way of life
Red honey bees make their nests in tree hollows in the tropical lowland rainforest. They usually collect nectar at the height of the canopy. They are separated from the other externally and genetically very similar species by the differently shaped sexual organs, the different times and places of mating flights and a low fertility of hybrids .
literature
- Benjamin P. Oldroyd, Siriwat Wongsiri: Asian honey bees: biology, conservation, and human interactions . Harvard University Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-674-02194-5 .
- Karl Weiss, Carlos H. Vergara: The little book of bees . Springer, 2002, ISBN 978-0-387-95252-9 , pp. 114 .