Apis florea

The dwarf honey bee is about 9 mm long.

The dwarf honey bee's range spans about 7,000 km, from Vietnam and southeastern China west to Iran and Oman.

It lives in a wide variety of habitats, including rainforests, savannas, subtropical steppes and semideserts.

Outside Asia, it was first detected in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1985.

It has recently spread to Egypt, its second entry into Africa.

When food is plentiful, a colony can send out several reproductive swarms.

Each colony builds just one comb, wrapped around a twig, out in the open.

Nests are usually hidden in shrubs with fairly dense foliage, 1 to 8 metres above the ground.

It is an efficient pollinator, especially of cotton.

The top of the comb widens into a crest, and scouts perform their dance announcing a new food source on this platform.

A colony quickly abandons its nest site if it is disturbed by predators or pests.

A colony produces only 300 to 450 g of honey.

Because the bees nest in the open, they cannot be kept in man-made hives for long.

Whether the invading dwarf honey bee harms local bees is still open: it competes well with western honey bees, but a Sudan study found no sign it was displacing them.