Role of Giant Honeybees in Natural and Agricultural Systems provides multidisciplinary perspective about the different facets of giant honeybees. Giant honeybees–Apis dorsata and Apis laboriosa are excellent pollinators of crops, fruits, and vegetables in cultivated and natural lanscapes. Their large size, long foraging range, and large work force make them the most spectacular of all honeybee species for crop pollination and honey production. Due to their decline, ecosystems and global food security are being threatened. This book is the first of its kind which deals in detail on varied aspects of giant honeybee biology, management, conservation strategies for protecting biodiversity and enhancing crop productivity. It aims to promote a large, diverse, sustainable, and dependable bee pollinator workforce that can meet the challenge for optimizing food production in 21st century. SALIENT FEATURES: Covers the latest information on various aspects of biology of giant honeybees and brings the latest advances together in a single volume for researchers and advanced level students Provides an excellent source of advanced study material for academics, researchers and students and programme planners Provides an excellent source of livelihood in mountainous areas and marginal farmers Deals with biology, management and conservation strategies for protecting biodiversity and enhancing crop productivity Excellent pollinator of tropical and subtropical crops, fruits, vegetables, etc. less prone to diseases and enemies This book will be useful for pollination biologists, honeybee biologists, scientists working in agriculture, animal behavior, conservation, biology, ecology, entomologists, environmental biologists, etc.

The future role of dwarf honeybees in natural and agricultural systems provides multidisciplinary perspective about the different facets of dwarf honeybees. The role of dwarf honeybee Apis florea assumes utmost importance in the context of pollinator decline throughout the world threatening stability of ecosystems and global food security. Apis florea is a low land species of south Asia extending more to the west than other Asiatic Apis species. It is an important pollinator of crops in hot and dry agricultural plains. The book is first of its kind which deals in details on varied aspects of Apis florea biology, management, conservation strategies for protecting biodiversity and enhancing crop productivity. The book aims to promote a large, diverse, sustainable, and dependable bee pollinator workforce that can meet the challenge for optimizing food production well into the 21st century. Features: Apis florea provides source of livelihood in mountainous areas and marginal farmers. This book will for the first time present the beekeeping from the perspective of agricultural production and biodiversity conservation An excellent source of advanced study material for academics, researchers and students and programme planners Excellent pollinator of tropical and subtropical crops fruits vegetables etc less prone to diseases and enemies Covering the latest information on various aspects of Apis florea biology, this book brings the latest advances together in a single volume for researchers and advanced level students This book will be useful to pollination biologists, honeybee biologists in entomology departments, students, teachers, scientists of agriculture, animal behaviour, botany, conservation, biology, ecology, entomology, environmental biology, forestry, genetics, plant breeding, horticulture, toxicology, zoology, seed growers and seed agencies and shall serve as reference book for students, teachers, researchers, extension functionaries and policy planners.

Role of Giant Honeybees in Natural and Agricultural Systems provides multidisciplinary perspective about the different facets of giant honeybees. Giant honeybees–Apis dorsata and Apis laboriosa are excellent pollinators of crops, fruits, and vegetables in cultivated and natural lanscapes. Their large size, long foraging range, and large work force make them the most spectacular of all honeybee species for crop pollination and honey production. Due to their decline, ecosystems and global food security are being threatened. This book is the first of its kind which deals in detail on varied aspects of giant honeybee biology, management, conservation strategies for protecting biodiversity and enhancing crop productivity. It aims to promote a large, diverse, sustainable, and dependable bee pollinator workforce that can meet the challenge for optimizing food production in 21st century. SALIENT FEATURES: Covers the latest information on various aspects of biology of giant honeybees and brings the latest advances together in a single volume for researchers and advanced level students Provides an excellent source of advanced study material for academics, researchers and students and programme planners Provides an excellent source of livelihood in mountainous areas and marginal farmers Deals with biology, management and conservation strategies for protecting biodiversity and enhancing crop productivity Excellent pollinator of tropical and subtropical crops, fruits, vegetables, etc. less prone to diseases and enemies This book will be useful for pollination biologists, honeybee biologists, scientists working in agriculture, animal behavior, conservation, biology, ecology, entomologists, environmental biologists, etc.

Despite being the biggest group of organisms inhabiting Earth in both diversity and sheer numbers, insects are barely commercialized. Most of the standard textbooks of applied entomology talk about insect pest management, and when it comes to commercial aspects of insects, only apiculture, sericulture, and lac culture are talked about. This book will help bring other commercial uses of insects and their economic potential to the fore. This will generate interest in further research on the commercial potential of insects, thereby harnessing a much-found resource. The book has the following salient features: 1. Encompasses all major aspects of beneficial and commercial insects. 2. Deals with edible insects and mass culture of natural enemies and beneficial insects. 3. Emphasis on the mass cultivation of beneficial insects for obtaining yields. 4. Discusses stingless bees and their products. 5. Helps to solve the problem of food scarcity and improve food security.

Capitalist agriculture relies heavily on the pollination work of bees, but this system harms bees in innumerable ways. Indeed, human agriculture is one of the main culprits for the declining populations of wild bees and the declining health of honeybees. This book presents a political ecology of pollination that critically examines how managed honey bees and wild bees are harmed by capitalist agriculture. The book focuses on the three most urgent problems: the standardization and simplification of landscapes through monocultures; the use of pesticides including neonicotinoids, other insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides; and the embeddedness of commercial, migratory beekeeping in the capitalist agriculture system which, among other things, has the potential to spread pests and pathogens across continents. At the heart of this crisis is the power and influence that a small group of agrochemical corporations have over national and international agricultural policy. The book argues for an interspecies alliance of small-scale farmers, bee advocates, beekeepers, environmentalists, and bees themselves, along with a vision for an agricultural system that nurtures multispecies flourishing. This book will be of significant interest to readers of political ecology, animal geography, environmental anthropology, food system studies, and critical animal studies.

For large-scale agroecosystems, patterns of pest population increases (graded increases or abrupt outbreaks) and declines (graded suppression or abrupt crashes) vary considerably and are influenced by factors within crop fields and across broader landscape scales. Better understanding of pest population dynamics and the implications of spatial interactions on the function and development of pest management approaches are the main themes of this important book. The book builds from a 60+ year history of field-based pest management by focusing on the drivers of pest management in large-scale agroecosystems and the landscape-scale processes that affect these drivers and contribute to variation in pest outbreaks and suppression. These drivers include abiotic and biotic influences such as weather, spatial composition and arrangement of landscape elements, and widely applied managed inputs such as planting and crop rotation schedules, crop varietal selection, and land and soil conservation efforts. The book introduces general concepts, opportunities, and challenges of arthropod management in large-scale agroecosystems. The book is essential reading for researchers in applied entomology and ecology and for pest management practitioners.

Agricultural land is subjected to a variety of societal pressures, as demands for food, animal feed, and biomass production increase, with an added requirement to simultaneously maintain natural areas and mitigate climatic and environmental impacts. The biotic elements of agricultural systems interact with the abiotic environment to generate a number of ecosystem functions that offer services benefiting humans across many scales of time and space. The intensification of agriculture generally reduces biodiversity including that within soil, and impacts negatively upon a number of regulating and supporting ecosystem services. There is a global need toward achieving sustainable agricultural systems, as also highlighted in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. There is hence a need for management regimes that enhance both agricultural production and the associated provision of multiple ecosystem services. The articles of this Research Topic enhance our knowledge of how management practices applied to agricultural systems affect the delivery of multiple ecosystem services and how trade-offs between provisioning, regulating, and supporting services can be handled both above- and below-ground. They also show the diversity of topics that need to be considered within the framework of ecosystem services delivered by agricultural systems, from knowledge on basic concepts and newly-proposed frameworks, to a focus on specific ecosystem types such as grasslands and high nature-value farmlands, pollinator habitats, and soil habitats. This diversity of topics indicates the need for broader-scope research, integrated with targeted scientific research to promote sustainable agricultural practices and to ensure food security.

Encyclopedia of Agriculture and Food Systems, Second Edition, Five Volume Set addresses important issues by examining topics of global agriculture and food systems that are key to understanding the challenges we face. Questions it addresses include: Will we be able to produce enough food to meet the increasing dietary needs and wants of the additional two billion people expected to inhabit our planet by 2050? Will we be able to meet the need for so much more food while simultaneously reducing adverse environmental effects of today’s agriculture practices? Will we be able to produce the additional food using less land and water than we use now? These are among the most important challenges that face our planet in the coming decades. The broad themes of food systems and people, agriculture and the environment, the science of agriculture, agricultural products, and agricultural production systems are covered in more than 200 separate chapters of this work. The book provides information that serves as the foundation for discussion of the food and environment challenges of the world. An international group of highly respected authors addresses these issues from a global perspective and provides the background, references, and linkages for further exploration of each of topics of this comprehensive work. Addresses important challenges of sustainability and efficiency from a global perspective. Takes a detailed look at the important issues affecting the agricultural and food industries today. Full colour throughout.