50 years.

Since its foundation, has steadily gained recognition as a journal that reports results from high-quality scientific research on the biology of bees, and this means Apidae in general, not only on its most prominent species, the Western honey bee, . All started 50 years ago in a conversation between two eminent scientists, Jean Louveaux, director of one of INRA's bee research unit in Bures-sur-Yvette and editor of the French , and Friedrich Ruttner, director of the Bee Research Institute in Oberursel and editor of the German , where they discussed the possibility of merging these two journals to create an international bee research journal. Here, we take 's 50th anniversary as an opportunity to provide our readers with background information on the journal's history, especially on the persons and their contributions along this journey.

Marked interspecific differences in the neuroanatomy of the male olfactory system of honey bees (genus Apis).

All honey bee species (genus Apis) display a striking mating behavior with the formation of male (drone) congregations, in which virgin queens mate with many drones. Bees' mating behavior relies on olfactory communication involving queen-but also drone pheromones. To explore the evolution of olfactory communication in Apis, we analyzed the neuroanatomical organization of the antennal lobe (primary olfactory center) in the drones of five species from the three main lineages (open-air nesting species: dwarf honey bees Apis florea and giant honey bees Apis dorsata; cavity-nesting species: Apis mellifera, Apis kochevnikovi, and Apis cerana) and from three populations of A.

"Up" or "down" that makes the difference. How giant honeybees (Apis dorsata) see the world.

A. dorsata builds its large exposed comb high in trees or under ledges of high rocks. The "open" nest of A.

Protein and Peptide Composition of Male Accessory Glands of Apis mellifera Drones Investigated by Mass Spectrometry.

In honeybees, reproductive females usually mate early in their life with more than 10 males in free flight, often within 10 minutes, and then store male gametes for up to five years. Because of the extreme polyandry and mating in free flight special adaptations in males are most likely. We present here the results of an investigation of the protein content of four types of male reproductive glands from the Western honeybee (Apis mellifera) drone, namely seminal vesicles (secretion in ejaculate), as well as bulbus, cornua and mucus glands (secretions for the mating plug).

Extensive population admixture on drone congregation areas of the giant honeybee, Apis dorsata (Fabricius, 1793).

The giant honeybee Apis dorsata often forms dense colony aggregations which can include up to 200 often closely related nests in the same location, setting the stage for inbred matings. Yet, like in all other Apis species, A. dorsata queens mate in mid-air on lek like drone congregation areas (DCAs) where large numbers of males gather in flight.

Evidence for convergent nucleotide evolution and high allelic turnover rates at the complementary sex determiner gene of Western and Asian honeybees.

Our understanding of the impact of recombination, mutation, genetic drift, and selection on the evolution of a single gene is still limited. Here we investigate the impact of all these evolutionary forces at the complementary sex determiner (csd) gene that evolves under a balancing mode of selection. Females are heterozygous at the csd gene and males are hemizygous; diploid males are lethal and occur when csd is homozygous.