First identified in the late 18th century, Apis florea is unique for its morphology, foraging behavior and defensive mechanisms like making a piping noise.

Apis florea have open nests and small colonies, which makes them more susceptible to predation than cavity nesters with large numbers of defensive workers.

[1] This suggests that honeybees originated in this region, with A. florea being one of the oldest and potentially similar to ancestors; therefore its first appearance in phylogeny occurs before that of A. mellifera and A. cerena.

[1] A. florea is called the dwarf honey bee due to its small size compared to other honeybees.

Drones carry a thumb-like bifurcation called the basitarsus, which is located two-thirds along the length of the tibia.

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.

The dance is a straight run pointing directly to the source of pollen or nectar the forager has been visiting.

[4] Distinguishing characteristics of the dwarf honey bees are outlined below:[2] support bottom) (cm) A. florea spans the continents of Asia and Africa and is most commonly seen in Southeastern Asia (Thailand), the Northeastern part of India, China, and forested regions of the Middle East.

[7] Apis florea are found in southeastern Asian countries, especially in Thailand, Iran, Oman, United Arab Emirates, India, Myanmar, and some parts of China, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

During warmer seasons like spring and summer, ambient temperatures allow honeybees to forage actively, and they will reproduce frequently.

During the colder seasons of autumn and winter, colonies diminish in size because they depend on food stores.

They tend to build combs at lower elevations, away from direct sunlight and on the peripheral side of plant branches.

A. florea tend to have longer foraging durations when compared to other bees in this genus, perhaps because they require smaller territories at lower altitudes and build open-combs on branches or twigs.

Their small size necessitates more time to forage for pollen or nectar because they have a limit on how much food they can carry.

Therefore, it is worth the cost of foraging for a longer duration if it means gaining the benefit of a highly nutritious food source.

This suggests that aggressive behavior is naturally selected for in A. florea because it facilitates defending flowers in a smaller territory.

Specifically, A. florea females produce no mucus as a sign of mating, unlike A. mellifera queens.

[22] A. florea show highly specific social defense mechanisms when they sense predators nearby.

For instance, they typically display hissing and shimmering behavior, in addition to nesting amidst dense foliage to camouflage themselves from potential predators.

[19] A more poignant example is the specific behavioral response they exhibit against their predominant predator, the O. smaragdina weaver ant.

When these ants are in close proximity, the bees produce and deposit sticky barriers to obstruct their path.

Hissing is a noisy, broad band signal that is also audible to the human ear and produced by slight movements of the bees' wings.

Individuals close to the piping bee are the first to hiss, which spreads rapidly to neighbors until an impressive coordinated crescendo is produced by the entire colony.

[23] As social bees, A. florea require a mechanism of communication, especially when conveying important spatial information about foraging, including direction and distance.

This suggests that A. florea do not prioritize nesting site nor food patch information by changing the precision of dance.

[34] This further supports the notion that Apis florea prefer to have a queenright colony and use worker policing as an ESS.

[36] Apis florea can migrate to a variety of diverse locations due to human introduction or of their own volition.

In Hindu culture, the honey from such bees represents “the blendedness of everything” and is served with other ingredients in a variety of traditional ceremonies.

[38] In Buddhist culture, gifting honey to fellow monks is considered equal to giving alms, one of the most expressive ways that one can reward a good deed.

[38] Increased deforestation due to industrialization has enhanced bee migration to areas which are less populated, thus human interaction is mainly limited to fairly rural regions of Asia.