Marine ply

[Finman]

,

honey bee has developed in Africa. what are evidencies about those times.

 

[Little John]

,

honey bee has developed in Africa. what are evidencies about those times.

Well, I'm not very well up on Africa - but it's worth bearing in mind that during the period of history we're talking about, many countries that we know today would have been underwater: eastern Spain, southern France, Italy, and a great swathe of land from Hungary through to Vienna. At the same time there would have been many land bridges that we no longer see today.

My guess is that as the climate gradually cooled in Europe and Asia, it may well have suited some strains of Apis to migrate southwards and westwards into Africa, especially during the latter part of the Miocene ? I think if I was a bee, that's what I would have done.

Anyway - I managed to find some info on Apis in Africa, and here are a few extracts which seem pertinent to this discussion:

Pollination Ecology and the Rain Forest:

p.92
During the mid-Tertiary [...] honeybee lineages were separated into two groups. One of the large ancestral populations of bees extended from the Asian mainland to it's extremes in the Borneo-Sulawesi peninsula, and potentially all the way to Africa. Later, as substantial cooling of climate and a great reduction in forest cover occurred in the Miocene, major lineages divided again two times, which fostered the evolution of the two common migratory honeybees of Africa and Asia - Apis dorsata and Apis mellifera.

p.93
The first honeybees ostensibly came from Asia and are now best represented by the smallest and largest living Apis, or by fossils of extinct species. The giant and dwarf Apis do not build nests in cavities but instead form their nest of a wax comb under a branch or rock ledge.
[...]
Giant honeybees and A.mellifera are excellent dispersers. If any biological trait is responsible for the fast pace of honeybee evolution since the Miocene, it is probably [the] mobility of such colonies, and their ability to construct a nest of wax from provisions in the form of honey, carried with them on their dispersal flights. They are thus somewhat independent of their environment and can emigrate readily [...]

The giant honeybees fly 10s to 100s of kilometers between seasonal nesting sites ...

Apparently the giant honeybee, Apis dorsata, is still commonly found right across Asia: including India and China, and south as far as Malaysia and Indonesia.

Never seen one myself.
LJ

 

[Hivemaker.]

Never seen one myself.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vll_2xH_SQY[/ame]

 

[Little John]

Thanks - excellent video - this forum never disappoints !

I must also thank Finman for prodding me towards enquiring into the African dimension - for as a result of this I've now put the final piece into the jigsaw (always provisionally, of course) of how and why the honeybee evolved.

It seems that prior to the Miocene Period the Earth's climate was fairly stable, with heat from the tropics easily circulating across the land masses, resulting in the formation of wall-to-wall forests.
But this stability was to be upset in the Miocene when the land mass we now know as Antarctica became detached from the main continent and began drifting southwards (abeit at a rate of a few mm. per year) by courtesy of Plate Tectonics.

This isolation lead to the formation of a circumpolar ocean circulation, which in turn had 3 effects: there was a build-up of ice upon the Antarctic land-mass which lowered sea levels; the development of a discrete and very cold Polar ice cap affected both ocean and atmospheric circulation patterns (due to the Earth's rotation) with the resultant lowering of temperatures which destroyed much of the forest cover, enabling grassy plains to develop; and finally, it resulted in the development of global seasonality and aridity.

So the existing bee species were presented with a most favourable environment in which flowering plants developed, but from which food supplies were seasonal. The collecting and storing of honey was 'chosen' by some bees as an alternative to hibernation.

So the current theory - which seems very persuasive - is that it was all down to the creation of Antarctica ...

Jeez - we've come a long way from a sheet of plywood !

LJ

 

[REDWOOD]

is that it was all down to the creation of Antarctica
please don't start this again

 

[simonrp]

What has this got to do with maine ply

 

[simonrp]

Or even MARINE ply

 

[Finman]

Well, I'm not very well up on Africa - but it's worth bearing in mind that during the period of history we're talking about, many countries that we know today would have been underwater: eastern Spain, southern France, Italy, and a great swathe of land from Hungary through to Vienna. At the same time there would have been many land bridges that we no longer see today.LJ

The result, that honeybees' home is in Africa, it came from genome mapping 6 years ago. Thinking geography and ice ace have not helped in that issue.

hindsight