ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the role of predation in shaping colony design among the honeybees of tropical Asia by comparing their methods of colony defense. The colony defense system of each honeybee species consists of numerous interwoven lines of adaptation, including nest site; nest architecture; colony population; labor allocation to defense; age polyethism schedule; colony mobility; and worker morphology, physiology, and behavior. Predation has been a pervasive and powerful force in the evolution of these tropical bee societies. The shared characteristic of bee and wasp societies of rearing large amounts of nutritious brood in fixed nests evidently underlies the evolution by both groups of elaborate colony defenses in the predator-rich tropics. Each species focuses its defenses upon different stages in the predation sequence of detection-approach-consumption. This radiation in defense strategies apparently reflects each species' preadaptation by worker size and nest site to a different pattern of colony defense.
