Wing morphometry of worker bees of Kharkiv, Sumy and Poltava regions of Ukraine

Abstract

The affiliation of local bee populations spread across the territory of Ukraine to the subspecies A. m. carnica, A. m. macedonica, A. m. mellifera, and A. m. caucasica has been studied previously in most cases using various phenotypic characteristics, and in some cases, through the study of mitochondrial DNA. According to previous morphometric studies, it was not possible to identify bee families that could be qualified as "purebred". The aim of this study was to investigate three apiaries from different regions of Ukraine where selection measures are systematically carried out to reproduce and preserve the local population of Ukrainian steppe bees, subspecies A. m. macedonica. The goal was to confirm this breeding positioning and find bee families suitable for further breeding work. The study focused on the wing phenotypes of worker bees. In this work, 10 traits were considered as wing phenotypes: seven indices Ci, Dbi, Disc.sh, Ri, Ci.2, Ci.3, Ci.2.1, and three angles A4, E9, J10. Statistical data processing methods and the STATISTICA software package were used as research tools. A total of 5200 wings of worker bees from 53 apiaries in the Kharkiv, Sumy, and Poltava regions were studied. The classification of wings in the Sumy and Poltava regions was carried out into four clusters, while in Kharkiv, it was into three clusters. Preliminary classification based on Euclidean distances using the mean values of traits for individual wing clusters and taking into account the Mahalanobis distances between cluster centroids formed three data arrays labeled as "UkrStep" and "UkrStep.2," which were attributed to the subspecies A. m. macedonica, and "Carnica," attributed to the subspecies A. m. carnica. These can be used as regional standards for studying bee families in this part of Ukraine with the aim of establishing their probable breed. It was found that the population of Ukrainian steppe bees (62.2%) predominates by phenotype on the studied apiaries. For four bee families from the Kuzemin apiary, 92%-100% of worker bees belong to Ukrainian steppe bees. АOn the apiary in Kharkiv, only one bee family had 86% of worker bees belonging to the population of Ukrainian steppe bees. It is recommended to use queens from four bee families for breeding purposes: one queen from the Kharkiv apiary and three queens from the Kuzemin apiary. Key words: Classical morphometry of worker bee wings, discriminant analysis.