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Subject:
Size of bees
From:
Peter Loring Borst <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 22 Sep 2016 11:07:24 -0400
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text/plain
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text/plain (25 lines) 
Hi all
One of the ways that Africanized bees are distinguished from Europeans is the wing length. Basically, if the wing is over a certain length, no further testing is done. Wing length in bees is affected by a number of factors, including climate. 

A new paper shows the range of fore wing length in Asian honey bees to be as long as 8.75 mm in Kashmir to as short as 6.59 in Tamil Nadu, with a gradient north to south. 

The cut off point between Africanized & European was stated by Daly & Balling at 8.85 with the average for African at 8.65 and the average for European at 9.12. However, as the following indicates, wing length can also be affected by hybridization and heterosis:

> In all paired comparisons for wing length, wing width, and tongue length the means of the hybrids were significantly greater than the means of the inbreds of the parental lines. Of these 36 comparisons, 35 were significant at the 1% level and one (L vs. M for wing length) was significant only at the 5% level. Heterosis was therefore demonstrated.

Roberts, W. C. (1961). Heterosis in the honey bee as shown by morphological characters in inbred and hybrid bees. Annals of the Entomological Society of America, 54(6), 878-882.

Daly, H. V., & Balling, S. S. (1978). Identification of Africanized honeybees in the Western Hemisphere by discriminant analysis. Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society, 857-869.

Mani Baskaran (2016): Variation in the morphological characters of the Indian honey bee Apis cerana indica (Fabr.) from northern to southern India, Journal of Apicultural Research

Comment:
Therefore, wing length is quite variable and not reliable by itself for ID purposes. Also, the rest of the characters vary together with wing size; cold climate bees are larger and build larger cells. Heterosis would be expected to affect these traits as well.

PLB

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