EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Giant Hives of the Giant Honeybee

Giant Honeybee (Apis dorsata), Family Apidae
Dudhwa National Park, northern India

Explanation:  Variously called the giant honeybee, rock bee, and giant Asian honeybee, this is an amazing creature regardless of the title.  It is found in south Asia, ranging from Pakistan through India and Sri Lanka to Indonesia and Philippines, and to the north just touching the southern part of China.  

Giant honeybees create massive, open honeycombed nests that hang precariously from limbs of large trees or from ceilings of open buildings.  Their selection of such locations for the nests might help thwart destruction by such predators as sloth bears.  Sometimes they build multiple nests in the same site.  The nests really are huge, measuring up to 6-10 feet across (2-3 meters).  
  

Here's a huge rock bee nest on a large limb of an old dipterocarp 
tree in Melghat Tiger Reserve, Satpura Hills, central India.
Rock bees often nest on such smooth-barked trees
perhaps to prevent predators from climbing up and 
destroying the nest for the honey.  Smart!

  
It is an unnerving experience to be in the pathway of a swarm of a giant honeybee colony.  I remember one sultry afternoon in northern India.  I was sitting on a second-story balcony of a house, when I heard a distant low humming.  It got louder and louder, as if a large truck was approaching, but the road was empty.  Suddenly I saw a large, morphing black cloud sweeping directly toward me from out of the empty sky.  In an instant, I dropped my book and fled into the house, closing the sliding glass door behind me just as several thousand giant honeybees pelted it like buckshot ... and then in another instant they were gone, off in search of a suitable site to build another nest.  

I was lucky that day.  Giant honeybees can amass a vicious defense and chase attackers a long distance.  

The honey, however, is sometimes worth the risk.  Like many other species, giant honeybees can be pacified with smoke while honeycombs are collected.  

But there is concern that giant honeybees may be on the decline in south Asia.  The cause might include pesticides, loss of nesting habitat, and excessive hive removal.