In Southeast Asia, the traditional “hive” bee has been the cavity nesting bee Apis cerana F., often referred to as the eastern or Asiatic honey bee. Management of this indigenous honey bee species in Asia goes back at least two millennia (Crane, 2000). In Northern Thailand, as in much of the range of A. cerana, colonies are often maintained in traditional fixed-comb hives kept in a vertical position without the use of frames or top-bars. As pointed out by Crane (2000), A. cerana will infrequently attach the combs to the vertical walls of the cavity, very different from the behavior of A. mellifera, which quickly affixes combs to the cavity walls (Figure l).
Our experience in Thailand suggests an ongoing evolution of A. cerana management from the more traditional approach of fixed-comb hives in the north to moveable comb hives, utilizing top-bars as well as frames, in Southern Thailand. Suitable nesting cavities are hollowed out from sections of logs (Figure 2a) or made by constructing a plank hive by affixing four vertical boards (planks) on a fixed bottom with a removable top. This from of beekeeping is found in nearly all of the rural north of Thailand. Within villages dependent on agriculture, there are typically two or three households where A. cerana beekeeping is undertaken at a noncommercial scale. Honey harvesting is restricted to a single yearly harvest following the primary bloom period. Honey yields per colony are in the range of 3-5 kg annually. A. cerana is a species where atraumatic episode, often causes the colony to abscond. Beekeepers rely on the reoccupation of empty hives during the primary A. cerana swarming season, which in Northern Thailand occurs in the mid-dry season (from February to March ).
During the past decade, we have observed increased A. cerana beekeeping activity in Northern Thailand, which has benefited from the introduction of a new cropping system, coffee (Coffea Arabica L.). While botanically originating in Africa, over the past several centuries, coffee has been in traduced throughout the equatorial tropics. Coffee is now the second-most traded commodity on an international scale. The first introduction of coffee to Thailand was recorded in 1824, when specimen plants were given by European merchants to the king and planted on the grounds of the Grand Palace in Bangkok. More than a century later, C. canephora (Robusta) planting began in Southern Thailand. The culture of this coffee species continues in this region and is responsible for the majority of coffee produced in Thailand today. Beginning in the early 1970s, C. Arabica was first introduced to Northern Thailand as part of a larger program by the Royal Project Foundation to develop opium replacement crops. Also known as upland coffee, C. Arabica was selected as the coffee species most suitable to the growing conditions of the higher elevations and cooler temperatures of semi-tropical Northern Thailand. C. Arabica is known to be self-fertile, but not necessarily self-pollinating. The introduction of bee pollinators has shown to nearly double coffee berry yields.
Our observations geographically focus on the sub-district Thepsadet (Doi Saket District) in the Northern Thailand of Chiang Mai (Figure la). Thepsadet , an area of 115 km2 , is comprised of approximately 1700. All villages are agricultural communities, historically involved in the production of rice and tea. The area is characterized as a montane environment with an average elevation of 1050 m. The introduction of coffee to this region began in 1980 under the sponsorship of the Royal Project Foundation, Coffee Promotion Program. Currently, there are 1200 ha of coffee grow in Thepsadet sub-district (Figure lb).
In 2009, the Royal Project Foundation undertook a beekeeper training program for the region which initially involved 17 households. Bam Kampanghin is an example of the success of this program, a village where 16 households currently manage 500 A. cerana colonies. The largest beekeeper in the village maintains more than 100 colonies, but the average beekeeping household possesses 30-40 colonies. These same individuals most often are also coffee growers, deriving most of the family in come from this cash crop.
In the Thepsadet sub-district, coffee is planted as an understory crop, most often along narrow riparian zones (Figure 3). As opposed to more centralized apiary sites, the A. cerana colonies are placed among the coffee trees along the water courses at a spacing of one or two colonies approximately every 20 m (figure 2). The colonies are placed permanently in these locations. This type of habitat provides a shaded environment for both the coffee and the bee colonies, adjacent to an accessible source of water. Coffee blooms from March to May, which overlaps with the primary A. cerana swarming period. Coffee harvesting starts in November and continues into February. Following harvest, the coffee cherries undergo processing, which includes ferme