Apis cerana
Encyclopedia
Apis cerana, or the Asiatic honey bee (or the Eastern honey bee), is a species of honey bee
found in southern and southeastern Asia
, such as China
, India
, Japan
, Malaysia, Nepal
, Bangladesh
and Papua New Guinea
. This species is the sister species of Apis koschevnikovi
, and both are in the same subgenus as the Western (European) honey bee, Apis mellifera.
, 1999).
There are eight subspecies of A. cerana are currently recognized out of eight two of subspecies are predominant and used for Apiculture in India are: Apis cerana cerana and Apis cerana indica
, these species are similar to Apis mellifera except in color A. cerana indica is black stripes on their abdomen and they live close to hilly areas and are sometimes seen in plain regions, A. cerana cerana has yellow stripes on their abdomen and habituated to plain regions of India
, and A. mellifera tends to be slightly larger than A. cerana and can be readily distinguished from A. mellifera. These are less aggressive and also less swarming behavior than any other wild bees such as Apis dorsata
and Apis florea
and can be easily used for beekeeping.
, mostly in wooden boxes with fixed frames. Their size is similar or somewhat smaller than Apis mellifera, and they also have a more prominent abdominal stripes. Their honey
yield is smaller, because they form smaller colonies. In folk medicine
, their beeswax
is used to treat and heal wounds
. These bees can be adapted to living in cavities in some human structures and in purpose-made hives, and their nesting habit means that they can potentially colonize temperate or mountain areas with prolonged winters or cold temperatures.
systems. During summer A. cerana employs evaporative cooling, where the worker bees cluster outside the nest in hot weather and fan their wings, thus removing excess heat and moisture from the nest and decreasing the hive temperature.
and round dance
languages. The waggle and round dances of A. cerana are performed in the dark, on a vertical comb surface of a multicomb nest, so they usually convey their wagging motions in the dark via vibrations. They have a foraging range of about 1 Km. Most of their biology is similar to A. mellifera with very slight difference in dance language, cell size in the comb and honey production. As A. mellifera produces more honey and has bigger cell size in their combs and very slightly long dancing cycle than A. cerana.
Varroa jacobsoni
and the parasite Nosema ceranae
, both serious pests
of the Western honey bee. Having coevolved with these parasites, A. cerana exhibits more careful grooming
than A. mellifera, and thus has an effective defense mechanism against Varroa that keeps the mite from devastating colonies. Other than defensive behaviors such as these, much of their behavior and biology (at least in the wild) is very similar to that of A. mellifera.
Honey bee
Honey bees are a subset of bees in the genus Apis, primarily distinguished by the production and storage of honey and the construction of perennial, colonial nests out of wax. Honey bees are the only extant members of the tribe Apini, all in the genus Apis...
found in southern and southeastern Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
, such as China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Malaysia, Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
, Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
and Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...
. This species is the sister species of Apis koschevnikovi
Apis koschevnikovi
Koschevnikov's bee, or Apis koschevnikovi, is a species of honey bee which inhabits Malaysian and Indonesian Borneo, where it lives conspecifically with other honey bee species such as Apis cerana Koschevnikov's bee, or Apis koschevnikovi, is a species of honey bee which inhabits Malaysian and...
, and both are in the same subgenus as the Western (European) honey bee, Apis mellifera.
Subspecies
(following EngelMichael S. Engel
Michael S. Engel is an American paleontologist and entomologist. He has undertaken field work in Central Asia, Asia Minor, and the Western Hemisphere, and published more than 300 papers in scientific journals. He was trained at the University of Kansas where in 1993 he received a B.S. in Cellular...
, 1999).
- Apis cerana cerana Fabricius ( = "sinensis") - AfghanistanAfghanistanAfghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, PakistanPakistanPakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, north IndiaIndiaIndia , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, ChinaChinaChinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and north VietnamVietnamVietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –... - Apis cerana heimifeng Engel
- Apis cerana indicaApis cerana indicaApis cerana indica is a subspecies of honey bee. A. c. indica is one of the important pollinating agents for coconut palms; the other species are: Apis florea, Apis dorsata and Apis mellifera ....
- Fabricius South India, Sri LankaSri LankaSri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
, BangladeshBangladeshBangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
, Burma, Malaysia, IndonesiaIndonesiaIndonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
and the PhilippinesPhilippinesThe Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam... - Apis cerana japonicaApis cerana japonicaApis cerana japonica is a subspecies of honeybee native to Japan. It is commonly known as the . This subspecies was determined, through an analysis of mitochondrial DNA, to have originally come from the Korean peninsula. They have been observed moving into urban areas due to lack of natural...
Fabricius - JapanJapanJapan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south... - Apis cerana javana EnderleinGünther EnderleinGünther Enderlein was a German zoologist, entomologist and later a manufacturer of pharmaceutical products. Enderlein got some international renown because of his insect research but in Germany he became famous because of his concept of the pleomorphism of microorganisms and his hypotheses about...
- Apis cerana johni Skorikov
- Apis cerana nuluensisApis cerana nuluensisApis cerana nuluensis is a subspecies of honey bee described in 1996 by Tingek, Koeniger & Koeniger. The geographic distribution of the subspecies is the south-east Asian island of Borneo, politically divided between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei....
Tingek, Koeniger and Koeniger - Apis cerana skorikovi Engel ( = "himalaya") - Central and east Himalayan mountains (Ruttner, 1987)
There are eight subspecies of A. cerana are currently recognized out of eight two of subspecies are predominant and used for Apiculture in India are: Apis cerana cerana and Apis cerana indica
Apis cerana indica
Apis cerana indica is a subspecies of honey bee. A. c. indica is one of the important pollinating agents for coconut palms; the other species are: Apis florea, Apis dorsata and Apis mellifera ....
, these species are similar to Apis mellifera except in color A. cerana indica is black stripes on their abdomen and they live close to hilly areas and are sometimes seen in plain regions, A. cerana cerana has yellow stripes on their abdomen and habituated to plain regions of India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, and A. mellifera tends to be slightly larger than A. cerana and can be readily distinguished from A. mellifera. These are less aggressive and also less swarming behavior than any other wild bees such as Apis dorsata
Apis dorsata
Apis dorsata, the giant honey bee, is a honey bee of southern and southeastern Asia mainly in forested areas like the Terai of Nepal...
and Apis florea
Apis florea
The dwarf honey bee or the 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....
and can be easily used for beekeeping.
Behavior
In the wild, A. cerana prefer to nest in small spaces, such as hollowed out tree trunks. Like the Western honey bee, they are sometimes domesticated and used in apicultureBeekeeping
Beekeeping is the maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, by humans. A beekeeper keeps bees in order to collect honey and other products of the hive , to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers...
, mostly in wooden boxes with fixed frames. Their size is similar or somewhat smaller than Apis mellifera, and they also have a more prominent abdominal stripes. Their honey
Honey
Honey is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
yield is smaller, because they form smaller colonies. In folk medicine
Folk medicine
-Description:Refers to healing practices and ideas of body physiology and health preservation known to a limited segment of the population in a culture, transmitted informally as general knowledge, and practiced or applied by anyone in the culture having prior experience.All cultures and societies...
, their beeswax
Beeswax
Beeswax is a natural wax produced in the bee hive of honey bees of the genus Apis. It is mainly esters of fatty acids and various long chain alcohols...
is used to treat and heal wounds
Apitherapy
Apitherapy is the medical use of honey bee products. This can include the use of honey, pollen, bee bread, propolis, royal jelly, apilarnil and bee venom....
. These bees can be adapted to living in cavities in some human structures and in purpose-made hives, and their nesting habit means that they can potentially colonize temperate or mountain areas with prolonged winters or cold temperatures.
Absconding behavior
Apart from reproductive swarming A. cerana have migration and absconding behavior which means that these species abandon the current nest and move towards new location where there is abundant nectar and pollen supply available and again build new nest. These bees usually don’t store great amounts of honey. This means that they are more vulnerable to starvation if there is a prolonged shortage of nectar and pollen. Absconding will start when there is not enough pollen and nectar. After the last brood emergence, the adult bees fill their honey stomachs from the storage, and swarm off eventually to establish a new nest at a new location. A. cerana has more absconding behavior than A. mellifera.Nest Defense
A. cerana are more inclined to retreat inside than to attack an intruder passing near their nest. But any attempt to open the nest, especially if it is done roughly, will cause bees to fly out and sting the intruder.Nest Thermoregulation
A. cerana maintains internal hive temperatures with a precision similar to that of A. mellifera, using similar mechanisms. A. cerana colonies maintain their brood temperature in the range of 33-35.5 degree Celsius even while ambient temperatures vary between 12 and 36 °C. This mechanism clearly shows that they possess effective nest thermoregulationThermoregulation
Thermoregulation is the ability of an organism to keep its body temperature within certain boundaries, even when the surrounding temperature is very different...
systems. During summer A. cerana employs evaporative cooling, where the worker bees cluster outside the nest in hot weather and fan their wings, thus removing excess heat and moisture from the nest and decreasing the hive temperature.
- Thermal defense: When an Apis cerana hive is invaded by the Japanese giant hornet (Vespa mandariniaAsian giant hornetThe Asian giant hornet , including the subspecies Japanese giant hornet , colloquially known as the yak-killer hornet, is the world's largest hornet, native to temperate and tropical Eastern Asia...
), about 500 Japanese honey bees (A. cerana japonica) surround the hornet and vibrate their flight muscles until the temperature is raised to 47 °C (117 °F), heating the hornet to death, but keeping the temperature still under their own lethal limit (48-50 °C). European honey bees (A. mellifera) lack this behavior.
Communication
A. cerana communicate with their nest members about the presence and location of food and water sources by means of waggle danceWaggle dance
Waggle dance is a term used in beekeeping and ethology for a particular figure-eight dance of the honey bee. By performing this dance, successful foragers can share with their hive mates information about the direction and distance to patches of flowers yielding nectar and pollen, to water...
and round dance
Round dance
There are two distinct dance categories called round dance. The specific dances belonging to the first of these categories are often considered to be ethnic, folk or country dances...
languages. The waggle and round dances of A. cerana are performed in the dark, on a vertical comb surface of a multicomb nest, so they usually convey their wagging motions in the dark via vibrations. They have a foraging range of about 1 Km. Most of their biology is similar to A. mellifera with very slight difference in dance language, cell size in the comb and honey production. As A. mellifera produces more honey and has bigger cell size in their combs and very slightly long dancing cycle than A. cerana.
Reproductive Swarming
In A. cerana reproductive swarming is similar to A. mellifera, for example, A. cerana reproductive swarms settle at 20-30 meter away from the natal nest (natal nest means mother or primary colony), stay for a few days and then depart for a new nest site, after getting information from the nest locating scout bees. Scout bees begin searching for suitable cavities in which to construct the swarm’s home. Successful scouts come back and report the location of suitable nesting site to other bees by performing communication dances on the surface of the swarm cluster in the same way they would do for food sources.Worker sterility and Queen Signaling
Honeybee Workers are infertile females and possibility of their reproduction is extremely limited. Their fertility is controlled by queen signals. The Queen honeybee informs workers of her presence by pheromones that queens secrete from their mandibular glands. These signals are acquired by workers in close vicinity of the queen and then spread to other works in the colony mainly by body contacts. In presence of queen pheromone signals, the vast majority of workers refrain from activating their ovaries. In the absence of queen bee at least 5% of the worker bees activate their ovaries and start laying eggs, this leads to multiple eggs in one cell.Pests
Apis cerana is the natural host to the miteMite
Mites, along with ticks, are small arthropods belonging to the subclass Acari and the class Arachnida. The scientific discipline devoted to the study of ticks and mites is called acarology.-Diversity and systematics:...
Varroa jacobsoni
Varroa jacobsoni
Varroa jacobsoni is a species of mite that parasitises Apis cerana . The more damaging Varroa destructor was previously included under the name V. jacobsoni, but the two species can be separated on the basis of the DNA sequence of the cytochrome oxidase I gene in the mitochondrial DNA....
and the parasite Nosema ceranae
Nosema ceranae
Nosema ceranae is a microsporidian, a small, unicellular parasite that mainly affects Apis cerana, the Asiatic honey bee. It may cause nosemosis, also called nosema...
, both serious pests
Pest (animal)
A pest is an animal which is detrimental to humans or human concerns. It is a loosely defined term, often overlapping with the related terms vermin, weeds, parasites and pathogens...
of the Western honey bee. Having coevolved with these parasites, A. cerana exhibits more careful grooming
Social grooming
In social animals, including humans, social grooming or allogrooming is an activity in which individuals in a group clean or maintain one another's body or appearance. It is a major social activity, and a means by which animals who live in proximity can bond and reinforce social structures, family...
than A. mellifera, and thus has an effective defense mechanism against Varroa that keeps the mite from devastating colonies. Other than defensive behaviors such as these, much of their behavior and biology (at least in the wild) is very similar to that of A. mellifera.