Resilient beekeeping in the face of varroa
The Australian honey bee and pollination industry is vibrant, with 1,800 highly skilled commercial beekeepers and 28,000 recreational beekeepers. The industry extracts 37,000 tonnes of...
Published: 29 Aug 2014
Author(s): Oldroyd, Ben, Dr.
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DownloadAn Asian honey bee, Apis cerana, became established in Cairns in 2007. This new invasive species is likely to have various adverse effects on the natural environment and on the beekeeping industry. This Summary addresses two of the most important issues confronting the beekeeping industry: do interspecific matings occur between the invader and endemic A. mellifera and if matings do occur, does it matter? Previous studies in Japan showed that if there are no other males to mate with, A. mellifera queens will mate with A. cerana drones. After such matings eggs either fail to hatch, hatch into drones, or, rarely, into female clonal offspring of the queen.