Global apiculture: a new outlook

Abstract

Apiculture has always benefited from the fact that the social organization of the honeybee interests scientists. In the tropics, especially, the management of bees will be capable of much improvement when their behavioural patterns are more extensively studied and better understood. This in turn will lead to a higher economic return from apiculture. At present there is still a geographical imbalance, with the majority of research workers in temperate zones and the greatest unsolved problems in the tropics. It seems likely, however, that the next decade or two will see an increased diversification of research effort, resulting in our knowledge of bees in the tropics beginning to approach that of those in temperate zones.