UC San Diego

Honeybees play an important ecological role as pollinators of many plant species, and their products are the basis for a multi-million dollar commercial industry in the US and more than a thousand million Bath in Thailand. This chapter provides a summary of the natural history of Thai honeybees. We focus on the role of Thai honeybees in pollination ecology, potential threats to honeybees, and commercial applications of products derived from honeybees. This chapter covers how honeybees reproduce, variation in caste development among Thai species, and how sex determines the division of labor in these populations. The discovery of the oldest bee species and the evolution of honeybees also will be discussed. In addition to behavior related to nesting and colony defense. We will also examine honeybee pheromones: how honeybees produce pheromones, how they detect pheromones and other odorants, and how they respond after exposure to pheromones. Finally, we will focus on the role of parasites (i.e., wax moth, mites), predators and pathogens on the ecology of Thai honeybees, and explore the consequences for honeybee commercial product and pollination. There are seven sections in this chapter on Thai honeybees, 1) natural history, evolution and taxonomy; 2) castes, development, and age polyethism; 3) anatomy, including the structure of the pheromone glands and exocrine glands; 4) olfaction, odor production, odor perception and pheromones, 5) pollination, 6) beekeeping, and 7) honeybee pathogens, parasites and predators. Our goal is not to exhaustively discuss each topic, but provide relevant information about native species of Thai honeybees in regional context. Much more information is known about the European honeybee (Apis mellifera) than other species of Apis. In some of these sections, we will therefore be necessarily brief. © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.