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Honey bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) guarding behaviour may not be a rare task

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2012

Peter Unger  and
Ernesto Guzman-Novoa
Peter Unger
Affiliation:
School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1
Ernesto Guzman-Novoa*
Affiliation:
School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1
*
1Corresponding author (e-mail: eguzman@uoguelph.ca).
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Abstract

Newly emerged honey bees (Apis mellifera Linnaeus; Hymenoptera: Apidae) of four strains were placed into observation hives and observed for guarding behaviour. Significant differences were found between strains for guarding propensity. The proportion of introduced bees observed guarding was significantly higher in all strains (41% of bees that were alive at the time of observations) than proportions reported in earlier studies. This discrepancy is likely due to methodological differences and also to the fact that in this study, living bees were counted when calculating proportions, whereas other studies have used the total number of introduced bees. Further studies on the proportion of honey bees performing guarding behaviour are warranted.

Résumé

Nous avons placé des abeilles domestiques (Apis mellifera Linnaeus; Hymenoptera: Apidae) nouvellement émergées provenant de quatre souches dans des ruches d'observation et noté leur comportement de surveillance de la ruche. Il existe des différences significatives entre les souches dans la tendance à faire de la surveillance. La proportion des abeilles introduites observées en train de surveiller était significativement plus élevée dans les quatre souches (41% des abeilles étaient vivantes au moment des observations) que les proportions signalées dans les études antérieures. Cette divergence est vraisemblablement due à des différences méthodologiques et aussi au fait que, dans notre étude, nous avons dénombré les abeilles vivantes lors du calcul des proportions, alors que les autres études ont utilisé le nombre total d'abeilles introduites. Il y a lieu de faire des études supplémentaires sur la proportion des abeilles domestiques qui affichent un comportement de surveillance.

Type
Original Article
Information
The Canadian Entomologist , Volume 144 , Issue 4 , 03 August 2012 , pp. 538 - 541
Copyright
Copyright © Entomological Society of Canada 2012

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References

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