Both environment and genotype have a significant influence on the foraging behavior of honey bees (Apis mellifera). We compared the colony-level foraging behaviors of two honey bee stocks at three different sites by sampling 50 foragers each from 16 Russian-hybrid and 16 Italian colonies distributed among the Coastal Plain, Piedmont, and Mountain regions of North Carolina. We detected highly significant differences in foraging behavior among the different sites, but we found very few differences between the stocks. Moreover, there were very few environment–genotype interactions on foraging behavior, suggesting that the effect of genotype does not vary significantly depending on the environment in which it is located. These findings suggest that, while there are some notable differences between Russian-hybrid and Italian honey bees, the environment has a relatively larger impact on honey bee foraging behavior for these two stocks.
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1 December 2006
Environmental and Genotypic Effects on Russian-Hybrid and Italian Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Foraging Behavior
K. Lane Kreitlow,
David R. Tarpy
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foraging behavior
genotype–environment interactions
honey bees
Russian bees