----- Original Message -----
From: "Aaron Morris" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2001 2:27 AM
Subject: Re: I need the scientific name for the killer bee quick!!


Aaron wrote:

> Small swarms of
> scutellata invade European hives, and eventually take it over via
> theiloky(SP?).  I'm sure I have the term incorrect here.  It's the trait
> where a worker can lay a fertilized egg.  Anyway, the small swarm invades
> the European colony, a worker lays a fertile egg, a scutella queen
results,
> kills the European queen and the colony is eventually Africanized, not
> hybridized.

You were aiming at the right term, thelytoky, a form of parthenogenesis or
virgin birth, in which (usually) diploid females are produced from
unfertilized eggs. The trait is exhibited by many insect groups. However,
you seem to have gotten the subspecies mixed up. It's the Cape honey bee, A.
m. capensis, from southernmost Africa, that will invade (via drifting
workers) colonies of other subspecies, like scutellata, and establish its
own queens through thelytoky. A scutellata colony rapidly becomes a capensis
one, but, accompanying this, there is often a breakdown in colony order,
with the result that the population may ultimately abscond or die out. See
the article by M.H. Allsopp and R.M. Crewe in the February 1993 issue of the
American Bee Journal for an account of how these unusual bees potentially
threaten South African apiculture, which relies on scutellata.


Tom Culliney, Hawaii Dept. of Agriculture, Division of Plant Industry, 1428
South King St., Honolulu, HI 96814 U.S.A.
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Telephone: 808-973-9528
Fax: 808-973-9533

"To a rough approximation and setting aside vertebrate chauvinism, it can be
said that essentially all organisms are insects."--R.M. May (1988)