تاثير رفتار نظافت گري برخي از توده هاي زنبور عسل APIS MELLIFERAL ايران روي مقاومت آن به كنه وار وآ

The effect of grooming behaviour of some Iranian honey bee(Apis mellifera L.) populations on the resistance to Varroa mite (Varroa destructor Anderson & Trueman)

The most important ectoparasite of honey bee is Varroa mite (Varroa destructor). One of the important factors of honey bee resistance to this mite is grooming behaviour that injure the mites and physically dislog them from their body. Honey bee breeders attempt to select the races that have this kind of behaviour and produce the races that have great relative resistance to Varroa mite. In this study, honey bee populations from Isfahan, Tehran, Markazi and Ghazvin provinces were compared for grooming behaviour. The statistical design for evaluating resistance mechanism was a comoiete randomized design. Treatments were colonies of four provinces from National ibreeding research project that carried out on five replications Each replication included one small hive with 100-200 bees that were taken from [each normal colony randomly and kept in a walking incubator. At the bottom i of each small hive, there was a metai piate coated with vasehn so that the mites that fall down can not walk up back on bees. The number of tell down mites were recorded each 24 hours tor 10 days. Results showed that on average Isfahan has the greatest percent o* injured mites (10 percent); Ghazvin, Markaz: and Tehran had 7, 6 and 4 percent injured mites respectively. Results didnʹt show any significant statistical difference between the colonies of provinces for injuries to mites but Duncanʹs multiple range test showed different statistical difference between groups of treatments. Two kinds of injuries to the mites were observed: first type (kind) was injuries to the legs and pedipalps and another type (kind) was the injuries to the dorsal and ventral parts of the body. Due to the greatest percent of injured mites and low population of mites in colonies of Isfahan, it could be concluded that the bees from Isfahan province, can decrease mite population with some behavioral mechanisms that grooming is one of the concerned behaviours.