Original article Drone flight times confirm the species status of Apis nigrocincta Smith, 1861 to be a species distinct from Apis cerana F, 1793, in Sulawesi, Indonesia S Hadisoesilo GW Otis Department of Environmental Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1, Canada (Received 30 July 1996; accepted 1 st October 1996) Summary — The drone flights of two distinct morphs of cavity-nesting honey bees were compared in Sulawesi. Drones of the ’black’ morph (Apis cerana) flew in the early afternoon and had nearly com- pleted their flights before the main flight of drones of the ’yellow’ morph. This pattern was consistent in all three study sites but there were significant differences in timing of drone flights between the sites. The differences in timing of mating flights provide the biological justification to recognize the ’yellow’ morph as a distinct species, Apis nigrocincta Smith, 1861. Apis nigrocincta / Apis cerana / drone flight / reproductive isolation / taxonomic status / Sulawesi / Indonesia INTRODUCTION Recently two morphs of cavity-nesting honey bees, were discovered on Sulawesi (Otis and Hadisoesilo, 1990; Otis, 1991). Mor- phometric and DNA analyses of specimens (Damus, 1995; Hadisoesilo et al, 1995; Smith and Hagen, 1996) indicated that the smaller, darker bees are Apis cerana, the broadly distributed Asian hive bee. In Sulawesi, this species has been collected only from the extreme southern part of south Sulawesi and from a small region of central Sulawesi. In contrast, the larger, yellower morph is widely distributed on Sulawesi as well as the islands of Sangihe and Mindanao to the north (Damus, 1995; Otis, 1996). It is easily separated from A cerana of Sulawesi on the basis of size, color, and detailed morphometric analyses. The obvious question is whether the yel- low bee morph of Sulawesi constitutes a subspecies of A cerana or a distinct species, Apis nigrocincta, as previously discussed * Present address: Agency for Forestry Research and Development, Manggala Wanabakti, Blok I/XI, PO Box 51/JKWB, Jakarta 10270, Indonesia.