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The 'Dwarf Honeybee' (''Apis florea'') is one of two species of small, wild honeybees of southern and southeastern Asia. It has a much wider distribution than its sister species, ''Apis andreniformis''.
This together with ''A. florea'' is the most plesiomorphic honeybee species alive. Separating roughly about the Bartonian (some 40 mya or slightly later) from the other lineages, among themselves they do not seem to have diverged a long time before the Neogene.(Arias & Sheppard 2005)
These two species together comprise the subgenus ''Micrapis'', and are the most primitive of the living species of ''Apis'', reflected in their small colony size, and simple nest construction. The exposed single combs are built on branches of shrubs and small trees. The forager bees do not perform a waggle dance to recruit nestmates as in the domesticated ''Apis mellifera''. Instead they "dance" on the horizontal upper surface where the comb wraps around the supporting branch. The dance is a straight run pointing directly to the source of pollen or nectar that the forager has been visiting. In all other ''Apis'' species, the comb on which foragers dance is vertical, and the dance is not actually directed towards the food source.

Contents

Ecology

Parasites

References

Ecology

Aside from their small size, simple exposed nests, and simplified dance language, the life cycle and behavior of this species is fairly similar to other species of ''Apis''.

Parasites

The main parasites of both ''A. andreniformis'' and ''A. florea'' belong to genus ''Euvarroa''. However, ''A. andreniformis'' is attacked by the species ''Euvarroa wongsirii'', while ''Euvarroa sinhai'' preys on ''A. florea'' and colonies of ''Apis mellifera'' that are imported. The two species of ''Euvarroa'' have morphological and biological differences: while ''E. wongsirii'' has a triangular body shape and a length of 47 to 54 micrometres, ''E. sinhai'' has a more circular shape and a length of 39 to 40 micrometres.

References

★ (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. . Erratum in ''Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution'' '40'(1): 315.