Evolution

Abstract

The study of honeybees provokes questions as to their origin. The subfamily Api-nae belongs to a family of bees living in social communities, the Apidae, characterized by special organs for pollen collection (pollen comb, pollen basket). No intermediates, less perfect in their social structure, link the four existing, highly eusocial Apis species to other subfamilies. This is in contrast to the full scale of intermediates of the many stingless bee species. Showing a superficial morphological similarity, the Meliponinae were for a long time taken as the closest relatives and ancestors of Apinae (Michener 1944, 1974). A later analysis resulted in a different phylogenetic dendrogram (Winston and Michener 1977). It seems useful to discuss this problem by considering various aspects.