©IFAD/Minzayar Oo/Panos

The Asian region, being in the tropics is high in pollinator diversity. Its rich vegetation and mild climate supports the population of pollinators. Solitary and social bees are among the important pollinator species. Other insect pollinators are butterfly, moth, beetle and fly. Birds and mammals pollinate bigger flowers, however, honey bees are the most widely studied species of pollinators.

Of the 12 species of honeybees, 11 are native to Asia, namely: dwarf honey bees (Apis andreniformis and Apis florea), giant honey bees (Apis dorsata, Apis laboriosa, Apis dorsata binghami and Apis breviligula) and cave nesting honey bees (Apis koschevnikovi, Apis cerana, Apis nigrocincta, Apis nuluensis and Apis indica).

The European honey bee Apis mellifera is not native to Asia. Most pollination studies were focused on high value agricultural and plantation crops. The giant bees, Apis dorsata, A. breviligula, A. dorsata binghami and A. laboriosa are providing pollinator services in forest ecosystems and are sources of livelihood opportunities derived from honey and beeswax. Apis laboriosa, the Himalayan giant bee is the largest bee species. Koeniger et al. (2010) described the bees of Borneo and advocated for sustainable beekeeping with indigenous bees. The cavity nesting honeybee Apis nuluensis inhabits only the highlands of Mount Kinabalu of Sabah, Borneo Island.

A promising species for crop pollination and production of valuable products such as honey, pollen and propolis is represented by the stingless bees. In the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand stingless bees are being used for large scale orchard pollination especially mango, rambutan and lanzones.

The following technologies have been developed and adopted: propagation of stingless bees using coconut shells, harvesting of honey, pollen and propolis from stingless bees and utilisation of stingless bees for pollination.

Based on pollen analysis, stingless bees visit more wild and economic plants than honey bees, Apis cerana and Apis mellifera. This shows that they are truly polylectic with 69 families and 179 genera of plants recorded as hosts in the IndoMalayan/Australasian region (Rasmussen, 2008). Further, stingless bees are more diverse than honey bees, consisting of 50 genera and around 600 species, with about 80 species in Southeast Asia and 11 in Australia (Heard, 2016).

In Asia, the most significant threats to local honey bee populations are deforestation, excessive hunting pressure, loss of nest sites, parasites and pathogens, climate change, forest fire, pesticides, street lighting, anthropogenic movement, tourism and competition with introduced Apis mellifera (Oldroyd and Nanork, 2009).

The introduction of A. mellifera negatively impacted the population of local bees (He and Liu, 2011). Yang (2005) reported a reduction of the population of A. cerana by more than 75 per cent. While pollinator diversity is still high in China, Teichroew et al. (2016) identified the same threats to diversity that are now observed globally.

However, despite the importance of pollinators to agriculture, scientific data regarding the pollinators in the region, including native bee species have been limited and were generated using widely varying methods. It is necessary to develop a harmonised method to survey the state of pollinators in the region (on a country by country basis), their relative density and relative abundance and health. The initiative would seek to identify the most vulnerable scenarios, determine causes and provide mitigation methods in order to protect the pollinators.