Aggregations of unrelated<i>Apis florea</i>colonies

Wattanachaiyingcharoen, Wandee; Wongsiri, Siriwat; Oldroyd, Benjamin P.

doi:10.1051/apido:2008045

Cited by 19 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…A. dorsata and A. florea do naturally aggregate, with neighboring nests as close as 0.2 and 1.7 m apart, respectively (Paar et al 2002;Wattanachaiyingcharoen et al 2008). Drifted non-natal workers may be common in these species, making it more likely that they exhibit reproductive parasitism following accidental joining of a foreign colony.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Caught in an evolutionary trap: worker honey bees that have drifted into foreign colonies do not invest in ovary activation

Smith

Loope

2015

Insect. Soc.

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Drifting, the phenomenon whereby workers from one colony find their way into a foreign colony, is widespread in social insects. In apiaries of the honey bee Apis mellifera, orientation errors lead to high rates of worker drift. Given that A. mellifera workers in apiaries enter foreign colonies accidentally, do they continue to refrain from laying eggs in the foreign colony, or do they behave in their evolutionary interests and attempt to lay eggs? We propose two hypotheses: the ''lost losers'' hypothesis, where lost workers do not invest in personal reproduction, and the ''lost social parasites'' hypothesis, where lost workers detect that they are in a foreign colony and do invest in personal reproduction. Previous work has used complete ovary activation as an assay for testing whether workers invest in personal reproduction, but this may not detect subtle reproductive investments in queenright colonies. We instead look at the full range of ovary activation in natal and non-natal workers, because partial activation may signal preparation for future reproduction. We show that in queenright colonies, non-natal workers have the same low degree of ovary activation as their natal counterparts, which supports the hypothesis that drifted bees are ''lost losers'' caught in an evolutionary trap.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Caught in an evolutionary trap: worker honey bees that have drifted into foreign colonies do not invest in ovary activation

Smith

Loope

2015

Insect. Soc.

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“…For the giant bees we need someone to study a nesting site for a complete reproductive season, counting the number of established colonies at the beginning of the season, the number of migrants that join the nesting site, the number of daughter colonies, and the survival of all of these. For the dwarf bees, which do not form dense aggregations as the giant bees do (Rinderer et al, 2002;Wattanachaiyingcharoen et al, 2008), such a study may not be feasible. However the number of daughter colonies can be estimated by determining the average number of reproductive swarms that are cast by typical colonies in a typical season, and estimating a failure rate from a sample of swarms.…”

Section: Huntingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conservation of Asian honey bees

Oldroyd

Nanork

2009

Apidologie

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-East Asia is home to at least 9 indigenous species of honey bee. These bees are extremely valuable because they are key pollinators of about 1/3 of crop species, provide significant income to some of the world's poorest people, and are prey items for some endemic vertebrates. Furthermore, Southeast Asian Dipterocarp forests appear to be adapted to pollination by honey bees. Thus long-term decline in honey bee populations may lead to significant changes in the pollinator ecology of these forests, exacerbating the more direct effects of deforestation and wood harvesting on forest health. Although complete extinction of any honey bee species is seen as unlikely, local extinction is likely to occur across extensive areas. The most significant threats to local honey bee populations are deforestation and excessive hunting pressure. Conservation of East Asian honey bees requires immediate action to determine what rate of colony harvesting by honey hunters is sustainable. This requires information on the demography of hunted populations, particularly the intrinsic growth rates and the rates of harvest.Apis / Conservation / Honey hunting / demography / sustainable harvest / pollination / dipterocarp forests

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“…The landscape analysis proposed in this study highlighted important implications for landscape management and pollination services. The heterogeneity in the spatial distribution of nests and presence of large aggregates, a tendency also observed among other eusocial bees (Singh et al, 2007;Wattanachaiyingcharoen, Wongsiri, & Oldroyd, 2008), is likely to translate into uneven pollination benefits for coffee farmers.…”

Section: Implications For Landscape Managementmentioning

confidence: 89%

Nesting sites of giant honeybees modulated by landscape patterns

Pavageau

Gaucherel

García

et al. 2018

Journal of Applied Ecology

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The composition of agro‐ecological landscapes is thought to have important implications for the production of major crops through its effects on pollinator abundance and behaviour. We explored the roles of land cover and land cover heterogeneity on bee nest distribution for the giant honeybee Apis dorsata, a key species for coffee pollination, in a complex agroforest landscape. We emphasized scaling and non‐uniform effects by combining two different approaches of spatial analysis, the point‐pattern analysis and surface‐pattern analysis. We found non‐exclusive, positive effects of agroforests, forest fragments and land‐cover heterogeneity on the presence and number of nests. The distribution of nests responded to habitat heterogeneity at small scale (<100 m), forest fragments at medium scale (<300 m) and to agroforest at larger scales (500 m to 2 km). Our multiple approaches highlight that the landscape effects were neither linear nor uniform within the study zone. Nests were consistently located in areas of medium agroforest density or medium to high forest density, but were absent where forest fragments are the most concentrated. The agroforest matrix was particularly important in shaping the size of nest aggregates. Nests tended to be few when there is low tree cover at broad scale, while nests were numerous when agroforest patches are abundant within the bees’ foraging range. Synthesis and applications. Our study revealed that structurally complex landscapes appear to support bee populations. The spatial arrangement of different land covers affected honeybee nest distributions by providing nesting and foraging resources across multiple scales. The results suggest that continued intensification of small forest fragments and expansion of large monospecies plantations will be deleterious to the populations of giant honeybees A. dorsata. Fragmentation of the agroforestry matrix at small scales (100s m) does not, however, appear detrimental for A. dorsata as long as sufficient diversified resources are available at the landscape scale (kms).

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Aggregations of unrelatedApis floreacolonies

Cited by 19 publications

References 21 publications

Caught in an evolutionary trap: worker honey bees that have drifted into foreign colonies do not invest in ovary activation

Caught in an evolutionary trap: worker honey bees that have drifted into foreign colonies do not invest in ovary activation

Conservation of Asian honey bees

Nesting sites of giant honeybees modulated by landscape patterns

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