Cliff honey bee
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Cliff honey bee ( Apis laboriosa ) |
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| Smith , 1871 |
The cliff honey bee ( Apis laboriosa ), also known as the rock bee , is the largest of the nine types of honey bees in the world at up to 3 cm . Many scientists classify it as Apis dorsata laboriosa as well as a subspecies of the giant honey bee .
description
Apis laboriosa builds a single, approx. 80 cm wide and 1 m long unprotected honeycomb , hung on steep rocks. By wild collecting (honey hunting) of their honey and their wax , whereby the comb is destroyed, it is endangered both in Nepal and in Tibet and threatened with extinction. It also exists in small areas of China and India . The drawing of the bee is black with white abdomen rings.
Most colonies migrate between a summer and a winter location, often covering distances of 100 km. The winter time, the seven months between October and April, is spent by the bee at low altitudes from 850 m with a more moderate climate . There you can find traditional plants like black mustard , Eupatorium odoratum and Fagopyrum sagittum . During this time, the bee colonies suffer great losses from the use of pesticides from agriculture at these heights.
In May, when the temperature reaches 25 ° C, the cliff honey bees migrate to the subalpine zone between 2500 and 3000 meters for 5 months until the end of September . There they fly z. B. Rhododendron species.
Systematics
The taxonomic integration 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 the giant honey bee ( Apis dorsata ). Nevertheless, 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.
Movie
- Roger Webb (producer, director): Nepal's honey hunters - In search of sweet gold (Eng. Original title: Natural World 'Jimmy and the Honey Hunters of Nepal'); Documentary filmmaker Roger Webb accompanies the young British beekeeper Jimmy Doherty on a trip to the honey hunters of Nepal. The millennia-old techniques of honey hunting, abseiling on slopes a hundred meters high and loosening the honeycombs of cliff honey bees on rock curtains with long poles are documented.
swell
- Ratna Thapa: The honey bees in the Himalayas and beekeeping in Nepal (PDF file; 445 kB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gerald Kastberger (1998): Migration behavior and colony aggregation in giant honey bees. Project report, FWF Science Fund, project number P 13210 download
- ↑ 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
- ↑ First broadcast : BBC (2008), German version of the film broadcast on Phönix (2011). Further publication under the alternative title Jimmy on honey hunt in the Himalaya on ZDFneo (2013).