Koschevnikov's honey bee

How to recognise it

Similar in size to the Asian honey bee but distinctly coppery-red, particularly on the abdomen — the colour is the origin of its common name and the most useful field character where the two occur together.

• Coppery-red colouring, particularly on the abdomen.
• Cavity-nesting on multiple combs, like the Asian honey bee and unlike the giant and dwarf honey bees.
• Restricted to lowland rainforest on Borneo and Sumatra.
• Overlaps with Apis cerana, from which it was long not distinguished.

Body length 9–12 mm (typically 11 mm).

Biology

Social organisation

Eusocial, colony survives the winter

Overlapping generations, division of labour, and a colony that persists through winter as a cluster. Honey bees, and the reason they store honey at all.

Colony size at peak

3,000–12,000 individuals

Colony lifespan

Continuous, with a readiness to abscond.

Winter

No winter. Colonies respond to forage availability and disturbance rather than to season.

Castes

Queen, Workers, Drones

Nesting

Wax comb in a cavity

Nests in tree cavities on multiple parallel wax combs, like other cavity-nesting honey bees. It requires forest cavities, which ties it to mature forest in a way its more adaptable relative is not.

Carries pollen

Corbicula (pollen basket) on the hind leg

On the wing

January to December

Active year-round in its tropical range.

Lifecycle

1. 1Colony lifePerennial colonies in forest cavities, with brood rearing governed by forage availability.
2. 2AbscondingAbandons nests readily under disturbance or dearth, which is characteristic of tropical honey bees.
3. 3CoexistenceOccupies the same forest as Apis cerana, with some evidence of differences in foraging time and flower use that reduce direct competition.

Where it lives and what it does

Habitat

Primary and secondary lowland tropical rainforest on Borneo and Sumatra.

Distribution

Borneo and Sumatra, and possibly adjacent parts of the Malay peninsula. A genuinely restricted range.

Behaviour

Poorly documented. What is known suggests it partitions foraging time and flower use with the sympatric Asian honey bee, which is one of relatively few studied cases of two honey bee species coexisting in the same forest.

Pollination role

A pollinator of Bornean and Sumatran rainforest flora. Its ecological role is under-studied, which is a recurring problem for tropical forest species.

High within its forest range, on the honest caveat that the data are thin.

What it forages on

Rainforest flora, with limited documentation of specific associations.

Honey

Stores a harvestable surplus

Stores honey in cavity combs and is harvested locally where it occurs, though not at any commercial scale. Attempts to keep it in hives have had limited success.

Relationship with people

How people interact with it

Very little direct relationship. It is a species that was hiding in plain sight — sharing a forest with a well-known bee and not recognised as distinct until the 1980s, which says something about how much tropical bee diversity remains unresolved.

Conservation

Threatened by lowland rainforest loss on Borneo and Sumatra, which has been among the fastest anywhere. As a cavity nester in mature forest it has less capacity to persist in plantation and agricultural landscapes than its more adaptable relative.