A swarm of Asian honey bees in Cairns, Queensland.(Photo: R. Gloag) Today there are two honey bee species that call Australia home: the European honey bee (Apis mellifera), introduced for beekeeping in the 1820s, and the Asian honey bee (Apis cerana) which was accidentally introduced to Far North Queensland (Cairns) sometime around 2007 and has established a feral population in that region.  Asian honey bees are close relatives of European honey bees and share many aspects of their behaviour: they nest in cavities, are generalist foragers, pollinate many of the plants they forage on and, of course, make honey. Indeed, they have been used for traditional bee-keeping in Asia for centuries.  Overall though, they are far less amenable [...]