Bees have attracted the
attention of mankind since its early evolution. Grouped under Phylum
Arthropoda, Class Insecta, Order Hymenoptera and Super family Apoidea, the
first most commonly known bee to the mankind was the honey bee followed by
the Carpenter bee or "Bhramara". Its records are available since the period
of Indian Mythological age of Ramayana [around 5,000 years ago]. Until year
2000 A.D. more than 16,300 species of bees grouped under 425 genera have
been identified from all over the World. In major, honey bees have their
strongest affection with men due to the curiosity for social behaviour
besides the useful yields like honey and wax. The services provided by
solitary, quasi-, semi-social and eusocial bees as effective
cross-pollinators have only been highlighted during previous century.
Now this is an established
fact that more than 3000 species of flowering plants depend upon bees for
their seed set. The pollination biologists world over are intensively
working to establish distinct co-relationship between the angiospermic
evolution with bees. Certainly, the existence of thousands of angiosperms
would have been endangered if strong pollinators like bees would not have
existed on our planet. These largely ignored mini-creatures are facing
drastic setbacks by the developmental activities of the human being.
Apparently, to save-guard the bees, their habitats, their belongings and,
ultimately the existence of all angiosperm dependent lives on this planet,
this web site presents the History of Bees in the form of an Updating
Bibliography of the Bees of the World. It includes all the aspects of bee
research conducted so far, however, in this initial release, most of the
works are confined to the years 1970 to 2001 and, a few for the year 2002.
A total of 6,103 authors contributed to 12,258 research references on
bees, have been placed in this initial issue including around 1,000 on
Apiculture. Out of them references of 515 authors are complete in this issue
besides, listings of around 800 additional authors are expected as complete
with respect to their references on bees. They are yet to be confirmed for
the completion of their enlisted work.
I have made efforts to include almost all works, still many are yet to be
included. It is primarily due to the limitation of freely accessible space
available on the web. Infect, such exhaustive work cannot be completed
without a Worldwide cooperation from all sectors hence I am sure that people
visiting these pages will e-mail/mail me the inclusions, amendments based
upon original manuscripts and their views to make this work nearly perfect
and more useful to all those who work or intend to work in the field of
beautiful friendly Bees. I believe that this very first presentation, will
inspire many to initiate their efforts and will lead to their deeper
involvement with bees for the benefit of our World.
I dedicate this effort to all those scientists and contributors who have
enabled us to know this much about bees.
SECOND UPDATED ISSUE RELEASED ON 31 JULY,
2003
Second updated issue is hereby presented to all the bee workers of the World
on 31st July, 2003. It was overwhelming to observe approximately
1700 e-mails received by the undersigned as an appraisal to the work. It
certainly encouraged and inspired a lot to move further. This issue more or
less includs majority of bee works published from European, African and East
Asian territories. It is
consisting of around 25,326 references on all aspects of bees with
approximately 8,000 authors. I regret a little delay than the prescheduled
date since author was intensively busy with "The
Catalogue of Bee Species of the Indian Region". Infect, compiling the
bee species ranging for the Cyprus-Turkey in the West to the Singapore in
the East.
Secondly, the speed received from my internet server has been quite
discouraging for the last three months. Most of the files have crossed 1 MB
size therefore instant and, complete replacements are not accepted by LAN
server. I am therefore, forced to include a few references then upload the
file, again include some more then reupload the same file and so on... The
procedure has consumed about three months.
Thousands of references appeared during the beginning and middle of the
twentieth century are yet to be included in this work. I am sure, people
visiting this e-book will ascertain the availability of all references on
various aspects of bee research, by their continuing cooperation and
support, as provided earlier.
Most of the visitors those having low RAM computers, may encounter problem of opening the
WebPages consuming
quite longer duration. The files have become huge and I shall make
observation with regard to time consumption. If they
will continue making troubles in opening [with enough delays] then files will
be break apart and accordingly alphabetical files in the
Alphabetical Author Reference Index will be further bifurcated to accommodate
more references. To contain volume of uploaded files, formatting of journal
names have not been italicized for the added references. According to the inclusions the
acknowledgement and
authors indices will be revised.
THIRD ISSUE ADDITIONS IN
REFERENCES BEGINS FROM 5 JANUARY, 2004
FOURTH ISSUE COMPLETED ON 15 SEPTEMBER,
2004
UPDATING OF FIFTH ISSUE ON 20 FEB., 2005.
THE FONT COLOUR OF INCLUDED REFERENCES HAVE
BEEN CHANGED FROM FIFTH ISSUE ONWARDS
UPDATING OF SIXTH ISSUE BEGINS FROM 5 AUGUST, 2005
UPDATING OF SEVENTH ISSUE BEGINS FROM 6
FEBRUARY, 2006
UPDATING OF EIGHTH ISSUE BEGINS FROM 3 OCTOBER 2006
AND COMPLETED ON 11 OCTOBER 2006
UPLOADING OF NINTH ISSUE BEGINS FROM
3 AUGUST 2007 AND COMPLETED ON 07
AUGUST 2007
UPLOADING OF TENTH ISSUE COMPLETED
ON
07 SEPTEMBER 2008
AUTHORS DIRECT CONTRIBUTIONS ARE
HIGHLY APPRECIATED AND CONTINUOUSLY REQUESTED TO MAKE THE WORK UPDATE.
I SINCERELY REGRET FOR FAILURE OF
UPDATING FOR THE PAGES OF ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND AUTHORS INDEX DUE TO LACK OF TIME
Dr. Rajiv K. Gupta
Associate Professor & Head
Department of Zoology
Jai Narain Vyas University
Jodhpur 342005, India.
Phone +91-291-2726666
E-mail:
beesind@sancharnet.in
