Connecting the bee dots

In his autobiographical account that traces and chronicles three defining dots of bee-related events, Makhdzir recognizes and acknowledges what spawned and shaped his interest and enthusiasm on bees over the last 50 years. His passion with bees evolved from his childhood days and over time those telling dots of bee encounters eventually turned out to be the catalyst for his career and profession. The three defining encounters with bees were: i) the behaviour of temperature regulation of a Giant honeybee (Apis dorsata) colony, at age five; ii) the gallery-nesting behaviour of carpenter bees (Platynopoda latipes) on wooden beams of a house, at age ten; and, iii) the harvesting of honey from Giant honeybee colonies, at age five. His observations of the contracting and expanding size of Giant honeybee colonies on hot and rainy days haunted him again in later years and he followed up on his curiosity by making it the subject for his Ph. D. thesis research. Through experimental manipulation, temperature monitoring of the body parts (head, thorax and abdomen) of the bees that enveloped the open-nesting, broodright colonies of A. dorsata to form a protective curtain showed that there were significant body temperature differences (less than 2 0C ) between curtain bees with fluid content in their honeycrops and those without. The fluid (water) in their honeycrops, afforded the curtain bees the opportunity for evaporative cooling by extruding and re-imbibing the fluid content on their mouthparts, in what was termed as gobbetting. The gobetting behaviour was experimentally shown to be stimulated by directing air currents onto the curtain bees that sought incidental evaporative cooling from any passing breeze. Under excess heat stress, during high ambient humidity and temperature, the colony resorted to performing colony en masse airborne defecations (CEMA) by the curtain bees to dissipate heat load. Usually more than 50% of the bees in the colony take flight to defecate en masse whereby the subsequent advantage is reduced body weight through loss of bee feces, and hence reduced heat load for cooling. The monitoring of CEMAs from morning till dusk serendipitously led to the discovery of the clockwork regularity of drone mating flights that occurs everyday at sunset where the incidence of loss of brightness was experimentally shown to modulate the onset of drones flying out to drone congregation areas in the direction of sunset in the horizon The second bee dot event of childhood days was playing kites with captured, gallery-nesting, carpenter bees, which also connected 25 years later to trigger the idea to develop a carpenter bee hive design that leverages on the concept of bee space (gap size of the nesting gallery). Efforts to address the nagging questions about a carpenter bee infested log close to the laboratory led to curiosity about the nature of nesting galleries of carpenter bees inside which subsequently led to the development of a multiple-frame, carpenter bee hive. Founding gynes (reproductive females) were enticed to settle in a new adjacent gallery, and prevented from returning to their old nesting gallery by deception, using wooden, dummy entrances. An observation carpenter bee frame hive was developed using plexiglass and restricting gallery construction within the frame width of slightly bigger than the thorax of the carpenter bee (bee space of 2.2 cm). Hive boxes of carpenter bee nests were introduced and propogated to provide pollination services in passion fruit orchards. The third bee dot event of observing honey hunters harvesting honey from A. dorsata colonies for the first time, led to further forays into the rainforests to observe and learn about the traditional art of honey-gathering from the hundreds of A. dorsata colonies that nest on emergent bee trees in the rainforests of Malaysia and the Asean countries. From research expeditions throughout the Asean region, it was realised that there were observable intricate faunistic associations between the Giant honeybees and its natural enemies of several species of birds, bear, bats, etc. Bee eaters and honey buzzards display adaptive morphological features in overcoming its prey (A. dorsata) displaying a special ability to remove bee stings and adaptive behaviour of subterfuge by using decoy strategy to confuse the colony. In response, the A. dorsata adopts a variety of evasive behaviour for colony defense, such as, colony enlargement by the curtain bees. Both the behavioral responses of the A. dorsata against attacks by its natural enemies and the subterfuge by by several species of birds, ranging from bee eaters ( spp.), honey buzzards (Pernis Apovirus) and falcons (Micrographis fangillarius) and bats that depend on the Giant honeybees for food around the bee trees, display an interplay of defensive behaviour. All three incidents of encounters with Giant honeybees, carpenter bees and honey hunters provided him inspiration for the development model for beekeeping in Malaysia taking into account the resource-needs, or specificity between plants and the type of bees. Different species of plant flowers may have obligate relationship with specific bees. Most important of all, pursuit of an interest with enthusiasm is the key driving force to foster and sustain interest in any endeavour

Critical temperatures for survival of brood and adult workers of the giant honeybee, Apis dorsata (Hymenoptera: Apidae).

Capped brood ( capped within 36 h) and adult workers of Apis dorsata were removed from naturally occurring colonies and kept incubated in laboratory hoarding cages at constant temperatures ranging from 26 to 45 °C to study mortality, survivorship, and water and syrup consumption. Capped brood died at temperatures above 36 °C. Below 30 °C adults tended to emerge deformed. Low temperatures delayed development. The optimal temperature for complete emergence of healthy adult workers was 34 °C. Adult workers survived well from about 26 to 36 °C. At 38 °C they died within 5 days and at 45 °C they died within 48 hours. Although syrup (1 sugar: 1 water W/W) consumption did not change over the range of temperatures used, water consumption rose rapidly above 38 °C to over 3 ml/bee in 48 hours at 45 °C. Nest temperature control is critical for survival of brood of A. dorsata and adult worker bees have tight constraints on their abilities to endure high temperatures. Water availability is vital for cooling the colony under hot, tropical conditions, and rearing healthy brood

Effect of carbon dioxide and cold anaesthesia on the hoarding behavior of the honeybee.

Hoarding behaviour of groups of newly emerged adult honeybees was measured after they had been exposed to CO2 for 10 min, or exposed to CO2 for long enough to immobilize them, or exposed to cold. Both CO2 and cold affected hoarding behaviour. Bees exposed to CO2 for 10 min initially hoarded less, and later hoarded more, than controls. The hoarding rate of bees exposed to CO2 only long enough to immobilize them, or exposed to cold, was generally depressed throughout the experiment. Due to the complex changes in hoarding that follow CO2 treatment, cold is judged to be the preferred anaesthetic for use in hoarding experiments

Male reproductive organs of Apis dorsata

Based on an examination of a large number of everted copulatory organs of Apis dorsata drones, a new description of the structure is given (fig 1 c), which differs from previous publications. The result is of significance for classification within the genus Apis

Rediscovery of Apis vechti Maa, 1953: The Saban Honey Bee

The species Apis Vechti (MAA, 1953) the Sabah honey bee is organized as a valid species. Additional to the description of MAA (1953) species-specific characters associated with the endophallus, hind leg tibial hair of the drone and worker bee fore-wing venation are described

Comparison of fusion of different algorithms in mapping of Melaleuca forest in Marang district, Malaysia

Melaleuca cajuputi and Acacia auriculiformis trees are major sources of nectar and pollen for Apis dorsata and the colonies are a major source of honey to the rural poor, honey hunters. Honey is a supplementary income to many of these people (including school children) in the Marang district, Terengganu. In this study, Marang area with 270 square kilometers was chosen as pilot study area in Terengganu state for mapping M. cajuputi and A. auriculiformis as two dominant species in low land secondary forest in Terengganu state. To inventory and produce land use map of Melaleuca forest in Marang area, in this study SPOT-5 satellite image in multispectral mode with 10 meter resolution which is acquired in 2007 as optical satellite was utilized. Most images from optical satellites have some null data from ground because of clouds and shadow of clouds. To solve this problem, Hue, Saturation and value (HSV) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) were used as fusion techniques to replace null data with microwave data which taken from Radarsat-1 image in C-band with 25 meter resolution image. Accordingly, fusion technique which was used in this research not only was a technique to improve information but also caused the accuracy increasing than land use map by just only SPOT-5 image. Also between two different fusion techniques, PCA shows the better result than HSV as two different fusion techniques

Molecular identification of Lactobacillus spp. isolated from the honey comb of the honey bee (Apis dorsata) by 16S rRNA gene sequencing

The objective of this study was to isolate and identify novel potential probiotic Lactobacillus using a culture method and Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) amplification of the 16S rRNA gene. Seventeen Lactobacillus strains were isolated from a full honey comb of the honey bee Apis dorsata using selective media. The 16S rRNA genes from the extracted DNA of bacterial colonies were amplified with PCR using universal bacteria primers. All bacterial 16S rRNA genes were sequenced, aligned and the distant bacteria were deposited in GenBank. The lactobacilli strains were identified as Lactobacillus spp. related-sequences (64.15%) with other abundant sequences being related to Lactobacillus kunkeei (34.85%). The findings revealed that Apis dorsata honey comb has potential to be a source of new bacteria with probiotic activities in honey bee or as natural food preservatives for the food industry

Observations on multiple mating flights of Apis dorsata queens

This observation is aimed at providing information for a reasonable comparative study on reproductive biology among the honeybee species. The research was carried out in 1996 in the submerged Melaleuca forest of southern Vietnam, where low-nesting colonies on man-made supports, rafters, allowed us to make detailed observations on the queens. Flights of six newly emerged queens were observed and after their final mating flights, queens were dissected to count the sperm number. The five investigated queens took their first flights 6 ± 1 (mean ± SD) days after emergence. Four queens took orientation flights of less than 3 min. One queen flew to mate without any orientation flight. Mating flights happened around sunset and lasted 15.4 ± 4.3 (n = 14) min. A queen undertook two to four mating flights and after fully mating, she had 5.5 ± 0.9 (n = 5) million sperm in her spermatheca. This study indicated the extreme polyandry in A. dorsata. © Inra/DIB/AGIB/Elsevier, Pari

Morphometric studies of Apis cerana in Thailand and the Malaysian peninsula

Samples of Apis cerana were collected from 44 locations in 12 regions of Thailand and peninsular Malaysia. Morphometric measurements were made on 58 characters. Statistical analysis showed that these samples could be separated into four groups: northern to central Thailand, southern Thailand to the end of the Malaysian peninsula, Samui Island and, less distinctly, Phuket Island. These differences support the interpretation that A. cerana has spread its range into south-east Asia in recent geological times