Some Aspects of the Reproductive Biology and Behaviour of the Asiatic Giant Honeybee, Apis Dorsata Fabricius

Up to now, little is known about the reproductive biology of the Asiatic wild giant honeybee Apis dorsata. so a comprehensive study on its reproductive biology is needed to improve the beekeeping technique. This study was implemented in the U-Minh Melaleuca forest. Vietnam and the Campus of Universiti Putra Malaysia, Selangor between July 1 995 and January 1997. It was aimed to determine the following: i) The drone t1ight time, sperm number of a sexually-mature drones and age of sexual maturity of drones ii) The number of queen cells and mating nights of v irgin queens. The observation on four colonies of A. dorsata showed that drones started to t1y at 3.4 ± 2.4 (n = 16) minutes after sunsets and stopped after a duration of 24.7 ± 1.0 (n = 16) minutes. The sperm count o f drones during days after emergence indicated that A. dorsata drones became sexually-mature after eightdays- old and a sexually-mature drone had 1.24 ± 0.39 (n = 31) million spermatozoa.

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