Mating behavior in honey bees (Genus Apis)

Abstract

Monogyny is one of the basic features of the honeybee colony. This links the rearing of new queens to the process of colony multiplication (Ruttner 1957). In other words the mating season in honeybees is inevitably linked to the swarming season. Reproductive swarming depends on favorable environmental conditions. Specifically, ample pollen and nectar must be available for two reasons: to produce enough bees before colony fission and to support the swarms which do not have : combs or any honey storage at the beginning(Seeley 1985). For survival, a new swarm needs more or less immediate access to nectar and pollen for comb building and brood rearing. Otherwise the natural mortality of worker camiot be compensated and eventually the swarm (the new colony) dwindles beyond a critical threshold. Therefore the mating season in honeybee populations depends on seasonal blooming cycles. This holds true for allopatric Apis mellifera in Africa and Europe (Ruttner 1992) and for populations of sympatric Asian species. Accordingly, in Sri Lanka (Koeniger and Wijayagunasekera 1976), in Thailand (Rinderer et al.Jl 993) and in Borneo (Koeniger et al J. 996) all sympatric Apis produced drones simultaneously. We assume, because of the uniform mode of colony multiplication by swarming within the genus, that there is not much “evolutionary flexibility” to change the reproductive season between sympatric honeybee species.