abstract
| - This species, together with A. andreniformis, is the most plesiomorphic honeybee species alive. Separating roughly about the Bartonian (some 40 Mya or slightly later) from the other lineages, they do not seem to have diverged from each other a long time before the Neogene. 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 gravity-oriented waggle dance on the vertical face of the comb to recruit nestmates as in the domesticated Apis mellifera and other species. Instead, they perform the 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 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. Both the bees were generally identified as Apis florea, and most information still relates to this species prior to the 1990s. However, the distinctiveness of the two species A. florea and A. andreniformis was established unequivocally in the 1990s. A. florea is redder and the first abdomen is always red in an old worker (younger workers are paler in colour, as is the case in giant honey bees); A. andreniformis is in general darker and the first abdomen segment is totally black in old bees.
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