Wild Himalayan Giant Honeybees (Apis dorsata laboriosa) live at high altitude, where the only blooming flowers in...

Wild Himalayan Giant Honeybees (Apis dorsata laboriosa) live at high altitude, where the only blooming flowers in the spring are Rhododendrons.  It is well-known that rhododendron/azelia/oleander are toxic, possibly due to grayanotoxin [1]. Unlike regular honeybees, which can't feed on Rhododendrons alone, they can and do (developed immunity), and are the only bees which produce Himalayan Red Honey, which has an [in]toxic[ating] effect and various relaxing qualities. It is not consumed locally as it is 5x the price of regular honey, so they sell it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apis_dorsata_laboriosa
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/29551447.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayanotoxin

In the wild, European honey bee (Apis mellifera) "пчела медоносная" lives in tree hollows. Our mighty, but primitive ancestors, used to rob their nests, stealing honey, partially destroying nests, getting stung, etc... It was lose-lose situation, and unfair to the bees. Nowadays, domesticated bees live in a hive, primitive bee hunter-gatherer became highly evolved beekeeper, providing bees with means of production, like hive, frames, water, wax, protection from bears and ants, etc. This allows bees to concentrate on and produce surplus (прибавочный) honey, about 10 kg per hive per year, in excess to what's needed to survive the winter, which is then appropriated (экспроприирован) by the beekeeper as gross profit. Fair is fair.

Bees are still wild at heart, don't really take directions, have no loyalty, and if a beekeeper is doing a bad job (too hot, too cold, water is too far, too many ants, bears, etc), bees get pissed really quick, start buzzing angrily and loudly,  then simply bolt to a tree hollow nearby. Fair is fair.

Himalayan Giant Honeybees build their nests on cliffs for protection from Himalayan bears. at 8,200'-9,800' elevation, foraging at altitudes of up to 13,500' [2]. The limiting factor for the number of nests is access to nearby water. Instead of coming up with a way to do normal cliff beekeeping, i.e. building cliff hives, providing water, wax, etc, Himalayan people still climb cliffs and rob the bees of their honey, partially destroying nests in the process. We don't approve of that at all. We are for the bees. Plus this, naturally, makes the total amount of honey available very small.

As their name implies, they are giant - 3.0 cm long, 165 mg, wing-loading 15 N/m^2. Regular bee is 1.5 cm long, 108 mg, wing-loading of  30 N/m^2. For comparison, C-5 Galaxy wing loading is 6100 N/m^2, and B-1B is 8160 N/m^2.

Regular honeybee BMI=0.48,  Himalayan Giant Honeybee BMI=0.18. They are the supermodels of the bees.

Regular bees also collect a little bit of nectar from Rhododendrons, although we never saw them on ours. Unlike the supermodel of humans,Marianna Dizik, with BMI=18, exactly 100x of the Himalayan Giant Honeybee:
https://picasaweb.google.com/112065430692128821190/20120303_RS_Swimsuit#5715925602814998498

[1] it induced an "apparently mortal paralysis" in Lord Blackwood in 2009 film "Sherlock Holmes", whose violin was composed and performed by Alexey Igudesman.

[2] The highest we ever saw bees was at the summit of Lassen Peak (10,500'). They were very suspicious of us ("чего припёрлись")

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