The United Nations declared 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity. It is a celebration of life on earth and of the value of biodiversity for our lives. We could not have had a greater contribution to this ideal than that associated with the publication of this extraordinary book “Honey bees of Borneo: Exploring the centre of Apis diversity” written by Prof. Nikolaus Koeniger, Dr. Gudrun Koeniger and Dr. Salim Tingek and published by Natural History Publications (Borneo). Between them, these authors represent more than 60 years of experience of studying and photographing the “Cinderella” honey bees of Borneo: Apis andreniformis, A. cerana, A. dorsata, A. koschevnikovi, A. nuluensis and the alien A. mellifera. Although the authors are distinguished scientists, the research discussed is presented, not as a difficult scientific monograph, but actually in an almost “coffee-table” beekeeper-friendly way. The language is very accessible and many of the photographs stunning. Of course, the information in the book is completely up to date and it is illustrated with nearly 250 photographs (almost all in color) as well as line drawings. It is fair to begin by asking “Why study honey bees in Borneo?” Because they are part of our diminishing heritage and this large island holds six of the nine known honey bee species, of which three, A. andreniformis, A. koschevnikovi and A. nuluensis are extremely poorly known. This first chapter ends with a beautiful photographic glimpse of these unique honey bees. Chapter 2 provides all of the necessary background information on the social structure of honey bee colonies which are basically single parent (mother) families run mainly by lots of daughters, the offspring of several different fathers (drones). The drones produced by the incumbent queen are actually her sons without having had fathers. The queen mother is long-lived and the daughters short-lived and together they constitute the basis of a superorganism. The drones are along for the ride and contribute nothing aside from their spermatozoa on mating flights. Clearly, the combs are the backbone of the colony and play major roles including brood rearing and honey storage. The latter is really a fuel reserve to see the colony through hard times. The combs also facilitate thermoregulation and provide a substrate for vibration during the course of waggle dances. The combs are also compartmentalized so that each kind of bee has its own cradle: worker sized and drone-sized cells and queen cells. Supporting all of this physical equipment is the ability of bees to provide dual air-conditioning, both heating and cooling, which for the bees, as for us carries costs. While stored honey is the social energy bank, pollen is effectively “tinned protein”. Chapter 3 is devoted to “Who is who in honey bees” and here descriptions, richly supported by photographs show the fundamental differences between the three cavity-nesting species, A. cerana, A. koschevnikovi and A. nuluensis, and the single comb, open-air nesting dwarf honey bee, A. andreniformis, and the giant honey bee, A. dorsata. This is followed by a pair of chapters on the fossil ancestors of honey bees and their relatives and a discussion about the origin of honey bees and it is pointed out that, given quite a lot of missing evidence, the quest for the evolution of honey bee species is still elusive. The authors then move on to tropical mobility, and if anything is unique about these bees, it is their endless swarming, absconding, and migrations. A great deal of the authors’ own researches has been directed towards mating and reproduction. Indeed, they captured the very first photos of a natural mating of a virgin queen and a drone and more detail is photo-documented in this chapter. Firstly, the drones leave their nests for mating and assemble near the canopies of prominent trees (drone congregation areas = DCA), each species at a different height and flying out at different times from their mother nests. On arrival of drones at a DCA, queens attract drones which chase after them. The first successful drone grasps a flying queen from above, inserts its large endophallus in the genital tract of the queen and then dies. After sperm transfer is completed, the queen separates from the drone and then mates with several more drones. Finally, the queen leaves the DCA carrying a visible mating sign. A day or two after successful mating the queen never mates again and begins to lay eggs. The specificity of mating behavior is elegantly shown in a cross-fostering experiment with colonies of A. cerana and A. koschevnikovi. Capped drone brood of each colony was transferred to the opposite species so that the A. cerana colony contained both capped drone brood of both A. cerana and A. koschevnikovi and, vice versa. When the drone adults emerged and matured, each species flew out to their species-specific DCA’s at their own species-specific mating times. In food resources and communication (chapters 8 and 9) the authors consider how honey bee colonies optimize foraging success. Success is based on a few scout bees that find profitable forage sites and then inform the colony by means of the famous dance language. The cavity-nesting species dance on a vertical plane in the dark and must convert the coordinates danced against the real position of the sun. In so doing, they convey both the distance and the direction of a food source. On the other hand, the dwarf A. andreniformis dance in the open light on the single combs and in a horizontal plane during which they point their dances in the direction of the food source and provide only distance information in the dance. A. dorsata dances on a vertical plane. So, three different modes of waggle dances occur, depending on the surface attachment of the nest. Colony defense against predators and parasites (chapter 10) reflect what the authors consider to be a natural balance. The honey bee sting, ultimately a modified ovipositor, is a formidable instrument, especially when it becomes a large group response and is exercised as a kamikaze suicide mission against vertebrate predators. These include the Asian sun bear which, having encountered honey bee defensive behavior, retreat from a cache of honey even if a recorded hissing sound of a colony is played from a hollow log. Bee-eaters and honey buzzards also make a precarious living hunting giant honey bees. Turning to insect enemies, an entire genus of hornets, Vespa, hunt honey bees and while the wasps catch their share, if they come too close to the nest, they will be killed in a tight heat-ball of bees which raise the temperature above the lethal limits of the wasps and at the same time probably asphyxiating them. Ants, a cosmopolitan curse to beekeepers, reach new heights in the formidable weaver ants. Then, there are the usual depredations of wax moths and parasitic mites. Three chapters (11, 12, and 13) are devoted to beekeeping as practiced with the native honey bees in Borneo. In traditional beekeeping, honey-hunters gather at night and construct a ladder of bamboo which they connect to a tree with pegs. They use a burning torch to fend off the bees and bring the honey down in buckets. The honey is then sold directly to consumers. On the other side of the central mountains of Borneo, in Kalimantan, Indonesia, there is an ancient form of A. dorsata beekeeping with “tikung”, man-made nesting planks, situated in a great fresh water swamp where only low vegetation occurs. The giant honey bees adopt these elevated planks and the beekeepers harvest as they wish. This method, known in the West as “rafter-beekeeping” is a rapidly spreading practice throughout southeast Asia. A. cerana, on the other hand, has traditionally been kept in pots or more commonly in hollow logs. Professional beekeeping based on movable frame hives has proven very effective and is spreading in the land. Two final chapters (14 and 15) discuss the introduction of A. mellifera into Borneo and enter a plea for equal rights for Asian honey bees, respectively. This species is a coddled bee, dependent on imported pollen as well as veterinary medicines. Unfortunately, these bees are able to transmit all of the disease and parasites to which they are prone to the Asian species. It is hoped that the authorities consider these risks carefully, as well as improving honey production in A. cerana. These combined problems warrant extremely careful considerations. And, as to equal rights, it can be noted that in the regulations of the European Community (EC), honey is actually defined as the product of A. mellifera!! Admittedly, the honeys of southeast Asia usually have a higher moisture content than those marketed in the West, but anyone who has savored longan, jujube, snowball or persimmon honeys will know the EC is riding a nobbled horse. The book ends with an appendix including a simple key for identifying the honey bee species of Borneo and cites further readings and contact organizations. The publication closes with a very useful glossary. The book may be obtained directly from the publisher Natural History Publications (Kota Kinabalu, Borneo) at their Internet website. About the reviewer Randall Hepburn had his first exposure to honey bees in the USDA laboratory at Baton Rouge in the days of Otto Mackensen, WC Roberts and Steve Taber. The sting lasted. After completing the usual degrees in entomology (Louisiana State and then University of Kansas), he spent a postdoctoral year with HE Hinton at the University of Bristol before moving to South Africa. Over the last 40 years he worked first at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (where a considerable number of unpleasant A. m. scutellata ‘accidents’ occurred, and then at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, environs of the local honey bee, A. m. capensis. He retired as Emeritus Professor of Entomology 10 years ago (which means he still goes to work but is not paid!). About 30 years were devoted to fundamental research on the enigmatic Cape honey bee, A. m. capensis, which attracted a small flurry of honey bee biologists from Germany, Austria, Ethiopia, China, UK and the USA. After he and his colleague, Sarah Radloff, published “Honeybees of Africa”, they quickly realized the need for new pastures and headed to then unknown to us, Southeast Asia. This lead to a decade of field work to clarify the shocking mess in the classification of what then passed for the Oriental wax bee, Apis cerana. This period was extremely productive and included many visits to Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Borneo, Cambodia, China and Vietnam. Work was concentrated on A. cerana, A. florea, and A. koschevnikovi while the giant honeybee, A. dorsata, was assiduously avoided based on the experiences of an old friend, Roger Morse. Nonetheless, beyond belief, the Koenigers find them agreeable company! At present, Hepburn (an entomologist) and Radloff (a statistician) are in the final stages of production of a comprehensive, multi-authored monograph “Honeybees of Asia” under the aegis of Springer-Verlag. Concurrently their research is concentrated on the biology, particularly absconding, of the dwarf honey bee, A. florea in Thailand.