International Journal of Entomology Research

Authors
Saleem Ahamad, Rajneesh Tripathi

Abstract
Honey bees have an important place in agriculture and also suitable for environmental monitoring. There are four species occurring in India of which Apis indica is predominant bees found and domesticated in India. They usually build multiple combed nest in tree hollows and manmade structures. These bees can adapt to living in purpose-made hives and cavities. For the study on identification and morphological characterization of Apis indica, a total of 120 samples were collected from various sampling sites of District Amethi, Uttar Pradesh, India. These samples were identified with the help of standard taxonomic keys and various morphological characteristics recorded for morphometric analysis. After that these samples were preserved in 70% formalin solution for future reference. Honey bee (Apis mellifera) is being kept in different parts in the world. There are many practices which are done on honey bee colonies by beekeepers. Such practices (e.g. requeening and migratory beekeeping) lead to differences in the characteristics of honey bee colonies in the course of time. Morphological characters of honey bees can be measured to characterize honey bee populations and to be used as an indicator for productivity of honey bee colonies. The samples collected during various seasons revealed that many of the morphological characters such as length of flagellum, antenna, fore wing, third and sixth sternites and breadth of hind wing showed significantly higher values for the samples collected during summer and autumn seasons as compared to those collected in other seasons. The present study provides the important information on the morphological variation in Indian honey bee Apis indica in different seasons from the Amethi regions of Uttar Pradesh, India, which is an important parameter in racial investigation of honeybees. To characterize honey bee populations, the known method depends on the collection of random samples of honey bee workersfromdifferent hives and locations. However, there are different factors that can affect morphological characters. Thus, studying the stability degree of these characters is required to identify fluctuation levels within open populations of honey bees and to recommend the suitable method for its characterization.