Potential Nesting Plants of the Dwarf Honeybee, Apis florea in the Plains of South Karnataka, India

Solur Krishnamurthy Ramyarani  lowast; Narayanappa Nagaraja

doi:10.53989/bu.ge.v13i1.20

Article

VIEWS 346
PDF 178

Geo-Eye

DOI: 10.53989/bu.ge.v13i1.20

Year: 2024, Volume: 13, Issue: 1, Pages: 23-26

Original Article

Potential Nesting Plants of the Dwarf Honeybee, Apis florea in the Plains of South Karnataka, India

Solur Krishnamurthy Ramyarani^1∗, Narayanappa Nagaraja²

¹Department of Zoology, Bangalore University, Jnana Bharathi, Bengaluru, India
²Malaviya Mission Teacher Training Centre, Bangalore University, Jnana Bharathi, Bengaluru, India

*Corresponding Author
Email: [email protected]

Received Date:01 June 2024, Accepted Date:03 July 2024

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

The dwarf honeybee, Apis florea, exhibits a unique type of nest site selection among honeybee species. These bees build small exposed single combs hanging vertically on the branches or twigs of herbs, shrubs, small trees, piles of dried sticks, etc. Studies were carried out to identify potential nesting plants of A. florea colonies in the plains of South Karnataka. The observations revealed that the honeybee nests were found potentially on shrubs (78%) followed by small trees (13%) and herbs (9%). Furthermore, among shrubs, they were found in large numbers on thorny shrubs viz. lantana (61.37%) and wild jujube (8.69%). Nevertheless, A. florea also selected needle bush and bush plum (5.79% each), Indian cherry (5.34%), cat thorns (4.34%), acacia (4.34%) and lemon (4.34%) for nesting. Studies conclude that thorny shrubs are potential nesting sites of A. florea in the plains of South Karnataka, India.

Keywords

Apis florea, Shrubs, Trees, Nesting plants

References

Bezabih G, Adgaba N, Hepburn HR, CWW P. The territorial invasion of Apis florea in Africa. African Entomology. 2014;22(4):888–890.
Shebl MA. Discovery of Apis florea colonies in north-eastern Egypt. African Entomology. 2017;25(1):248–249.
Crane E. The world history of beekeeping and honey hunting. (pp. 704) Routledge, New York. 1999.
Nagaraja N. Nesting patterns of giant honeybee, Apis dorsata in plains of Karnataka, India. Journal of Entomological Research. 2019;43:503–508. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.5958/0974-4576.2019.00088.4
Franks NR, Pratt SC, Mallon EB, Britton NF, Sumpter D. Information flow, opinion polling and collective intelligence in house-hunting social insects. Philosophical Transactions the Royal Society London Biological Sciences. 2002;357(1427):1567–1583. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1098%2Frstb.2002.1066
Neupane KR, Woyke J, Poudel SM, Zhang S, Yang H, Singh L. Nesting Site-preference and behavior of giant honey bee Apis dorsata. Apimondia. 2013;1225:41-42
Oldroyd BP, Gloag RS, Even N, Wattanachaiyingcharoen W & Beekman M. Nest-site selection in the open-nesting honeybee Apis florea. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. 2008;62:1643–1653. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-008-0593-5
Seeley TD, Visscher PK. Survival of honeybees in cold climates: The critical timing of colony growth and reproduction. Ecological Entomology. 1985;10:81–88. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2311.1985.tb00537.x
Ramyarani SK, Nagaraja N. Nesting behavior of the red dwarf honeybee. Apis florea Fabricius (Hymenoptera: Apidae). Apidologie. 2024;55, 27. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13592-024-01067-7
Nagaraja N . Biology of dwarf honeybee, Apis florea Fabricius (Hymenoptera: Apidae) In: The future role of dwarf honeybee natural and agricultural systems . (pp. 13-24) Taylor and Francis Group. 2020.
Orr MC, JM, Threatt AH, Mupepele AC. A review of global trends in the study types used to investigate bee nesting biology. Basic and Applied Ecology. 2022;62:12–21. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.baae.2022.03.012
Kumar R, Kumar NR. Influencing of changing cultural practices on nesting behavior of Apis florea Fabricius. Universal journal of environmental research and technology. 2014;4(2):63–71.
Whitcombe RP. The biology of Apis spp. in Oman with special reference to Apis florea . thesis
Thapa R. The Himalayan giant honeybee and its role in eco-tourism development in Nepal. BeeWorld. 2001;82(3):139–141.

Copyright

© 2024 Ramyarani & Nagaraja. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.