NCBS Bengaluru museum begins collection of bee species to study behavioural traits

“So far, we have specimens from all the different honey bee species, including the giant honey bees Apis dorsata, Apis laboriosa, Apis binghami and Apis breviligula. Of the four, Apis laboriosa is particularly a spectacular species largely because it usually nests on inaccessible cliff crevices in the Himalayas,” said H M Yeshwanth, Museum and Collections Incharge at NCBS.

Bumble bee specimes from high-altitude regions of Arunachal Pradesh (Photo credit: NCBS-TIFR)

Three scientists from NCBS-Axel, Brockmann, Sanjay Sane and Krushnamegh Kunte, are a part of a collaborative study with over 74 scientists from 13 Asian countries, working to chart a roadmap to take the Asian bee research forward.

“In fact, the very first idea for this initiative goes back to the second ‘Bangalore Meeting on Asian Bees’ held at NCBS in March 2019, which brought together Asian bee researchers working on taxonomy, behavior, and conservation,” said Brockmann, whose research focuses on the ecology and behavior of honey bees and bumble bees, native to India.

In addition to honey bees, the museum also has a unique collection of 1,200 bumble bee specimens belonging to 24 different species from Northeast India collected by Brockmann and his collaborators from Germany and the Rajiv Gandhi University in Arunachal Pradesh.

“The rapid global decline of insect pollinators, especially bees in the last few decades, has alarmed entomologists and ecologists, giving rise to numerous scientific studies and citizen science projects to collect data on species diversity, behavioural traits and to identify the factors responsible for it. In addition to this, a wide array of conservation and management solutions to curb or stop the dwindling numbers of bees and other pollinators have also been put forward. However, most of these studies were carried out in North America and Europe and may not entirely represent the trends and patterns for bee populations in the rest of the world,” NCBS said in a statement.