Bibliography of the Asian Species of Honeybees

Abstract

This bibliography of the literature on species of honeybees native to Asia is an extension of the recently published bibliographies on Apis andreniformis (Hepburn and Hepburn 2009), Apis cerana (Hepburn and Hepburn 2006), Apis dorsata and Apis laboriosa (Hepburn and Hepburn 2007a), Apis florea (Hepburn and Hepburn 2005) and Apis koschevnikovi (Hepburn and Hepburn 2007b). It was compiled from nearly 3,550 references, written by about 3,000 authors and published in over 700 different periodicals, conference proceedings, theses, reports, books and patents covering the period 1787–2009. The bibliography was prepared by obtaining all references to Asian honeybees published in Zoological Record (1864–2003) and Apicultural Abstracts (1950–2004) as well as the species-specific bibliographies of other workers cited in the Hepburn bibliographies. Subsequently, copies of most of the original publications were obtained, and the references cited therein were traced in continuous iterations into the past until no new references were found. For the period 2005–2009, particular use was made of the website Google Scholar, which is supported by various other citation websites, the most reliable of which are the British Library (BL Direct), US National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health (http://www.pumed.gov), Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (INIST-CNRS) and Ingenta, a division of Publishing Technology plc (http://www.ingentaconnect.com). Recent references in Chinese are available at the website Wanfang Data, an affiliate of the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, but unfortunately, the citations are incomplete. Oddly enough, Google often gives more download choices for citations of the same article than does Google Scholar. In some cases, incomplete citations (particularly in Chinese) are given because complete information could not always be obtained, and they are marked with an asterisk. Similarly, several citations were