The post-capping period of the tropical honey bee subspecies Apis mellifera unicolor in La Réunion

Jobart Benoit, Delatte Hélène, Decante Damien, Esnault Olivier, Lebreton Gérard, Blot Nicolas, Clémencet Johanna. 2023. The post-capping period of the tropical honey bee subspecies Apis mellifera unicolor in La Réunion. Apidologie, 54 (5):50, 10 p.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13592-023-01032-w

Article de revue ; Article de recherche ; Article de revue à facteur d'impact

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Résumé : The honey bee Apis mellifera has shown a great intraspecific diversity, together with a variability of its life history traits. The development of the brood has been well documented in temperate but much less in tropical subspecies, but a limited number of studies focused on tropical subspecies. This study measures the post-capping period of A. mellifera unicolor, an African lineage subspecies living in a tropical and insular environment. The post-capping period was measured on 15 colonies distributed on two apiaries located at different altitudes (150 m and 900 m) in La Réunion. The mean post-capping period of A. mellifera unicolor was 280.1 ± 0.12 h and was significantly shorter in colonies at low altitude. A comparative analysis of the literature on the post-capping period for different subspecies showed that the post-capping period of the African lineage was significatively shorter than that of European lineage. A. mellifera unicolor post-capping period belonged to the hybrid cluster between them. Knowledge of such life history traits of A. mellifera unicolor may have implications for beekeeping practices and should be considered as one of the potential resistance traits to be evaluated in Varroa destructor breeding programmes.

Mots-clés Agrovoc : Apis mellifera, zone tropicale, Apis mellifera mellifera, Varroa, cycle de développement, Varroa destructor, histoire, organisme indigène, lignée

Mots-clés géographiques Agrovoc : La Réunion, France

Mots-clés libres : Apis mellifera unicolor, Post‑capping period, Tropical honey bee

Classification Agris : L20 - Écologie animale

Champ stratégique Cirad : CTS 1 (2019-) - Biodiversité

Agences de financement européennes : European Regional Development Fund, European Commission

Agences de financement hors UE : Conseil Régional de La Réunion, Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement

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