Natural convection of air in a horizontal annulus with the inner cylinder cooled by the application of a constant heat flux and the isothermally heated outer cylinder is considered. The bifurcation phenomenon of flow patterns and the heat transfer characteristics are numerically investigated. The zero initial condition induces a unicellular flow in a half annulus. A bicellular flow consisting of two counter-rotating eddies in a half annulus can be obtained above a certain critical Rayleigh number. A transition from the bicellular to the unicellular flow occurs with a decrease in Rayleigh number. Hysteresis phenomena have not been observed. In the regime of dual flows, the overall Nusselt number of the bicellular flow is greater than that of the unicellular flow.