Apis cerana, or the Asiatic honey bee (or the Eastern honey bee or the Indian honey bee), is a small honey bee found in southern and southeastern Asia, including all the countries of the Himalayan region (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan) as well as Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Vietnam, and probably other countries. This species is also known as the Himalayan hive honeybee. This species is a sister species of Apis koschevnikovi, and both are in the same genus, Apis, as the Western (European) honeybee, Apis mellifera.

Honey bees (or honeybees) are a subset of bees, primarily distinguished by the production and storage of honey and the construction of perennial, colonial nests out of wax. Honey bees are the only extant members of the tribe Apini, all in the genus Apis. Currently, there are only seven recognized species of honey bee with a total of 44 subspecies (Engel, 1999) though historically, anywhere from six to eleven species have been recognized. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the approximately 20,000 known species of bees. Some other types of related bees produce and store honey, but only members of the genus Apis are true honey bees.