Muzafar Shah, Mian Sayed Khan, Muhammad Ather Rafi, Sardar Azhar Mehmood, and Muhammad Farooq, from
the institute of Pakistan. wrote a Research article about, Nesting &
Social Behavior of Wasps and Honey Bees in Mansehra. Entitled, Nesting biology
and Social behaviour of Paper wasp (Polistes flavus) and Honey bee (Apis
mellifera) in District Mansehra, Pakistan. This research paper published by the
International Journal of Biosciences | IJB. an open access scholarly research
journal Biosciences. under the affiliation of the International
Network For Natural Sciences| INNSpub. an open access multidisciplinary
research journal publisher.
Abstract
In the present study,
nesting and social behaviour were carried out of Polistes flavus (Cresson)
and Apis mellifera (Smith) from district Mansehra. Nest of paper
wasps were found among bunches of leaves in the tree with 1-5 flat steps layers
containing hundreds of hexagonal cells in one sided hanging to downward. Hive
of the honey bee were pouched like containing double sided hexagonal cells one
for eggs while in other stored food materials. X-ray diffraction was used for
elemental analysis of P. flavus nests showed Ca with the highest
amount of element while K with the lowest amount in descending order a: P.
flavus: Ca>Al>Si; A. mellifera: Ca>Si>Mg. Social behaviour
of A. mellifera showed strong defensive behaviours, pseudoattack,
subsequent erratic flight, wing buzzing, mandibular pecking, abdominal pumping
and abdominal twisting while P. flavus showed week defensive
behaviour as compared to A. mellifera. Parental care was highly developed
in A. mellifera. By disturbing, they try to protect their larvae in their
nest by high defensive behaviour.
Introduction
The name wasp applied
to many winged insects of the order Hymenoptera, which also includes ants and
bees (Bertram et al., 2003). Most of the wasps are carnivorous, feeding on
insects, grubs, or spiders. They have biting mouthparts, and have stings
through which they paralyze their prey for eating. The sting can be used
repeatedly. The thorax of a wasp is attached to the abdomen by a narrow stalk.
Some wasps are solid black or dark blue, but most have red, orange, or yellow
wings or markings while Stripes are common. The great majority of the waps are
solitary, but one family (Vespidae) includes both social forms (paper wasps,
hornets and yellow jackets) and solitary forms, e.g., the potter wasps (Bertram
et al., 2003).
In social wasp colonies
there are usually three castes, the egg-laying queens (one or more per colony),
the workers, or sexually undeveloped females and the drones or males. Social
wasps build nests of a coarse, papery material, prepared by masticating wood
fiber. The eggs are deposited in the compartments or cells of the nest where
they develop into larvae and then pupae, emerging as adults. Adult social wasps
feed chiefly on nectar and plant sap but feed the larvae with masticated animal
food. In temperate regions a colony lasts a single season, the drones and
workers dying in the fall. The mated queens take shelter during the winter and
in spring lay eggs and start new colonies. In the tropics colonies continue
indefinitely, dividing when they grow very large (Oldroyd, 2004).
Nests are typically
built in hollow trees, but they are often found in barns, sheds, attics, and
hollow areas of house walls. They rarely build the nests that are free hanging
or in unprotected areas, such as tree and houses. They use decaying wood fiber
to build a shell around their nest as protection. As winter approaches, the
worker bees die off and the queen will leave the existing nest and find an
empty log or other sheltered spot to spend the winter. They also use the bark
fiber of trees to build their nests. They have smooth stingers, so they can
sting over and over again. Their stings also carry venom that makes the stings
hurt, itch or swell for about 24 hours. A European hornet sting has the same
risk of allergic reactions from as with other wasp stings (Jones et al., 2004).
The paper wasp,
Polistes flavus is the most common type of wasp which is cosmopolitan
throughout the world and mostly built their nest in human houses and trees. It
is also the single largest genus within the family Vespidae, with over 300
recognized species and subspecies. Their innate preferences for nestbuilding
sites leads them to commonly build nests on human habitation, where they can be
very unwelcome; although generally non-aggressive, they can be provoked into
defending their nests (Espelie et al., 1996). All species are predatory and
they may consume large numbers of caterpillars, in which respect they are
generally considered beneficial. Polistes wasps can be identified by their
characteristic flight, their long legs and dangle below their body (Turillazzi
et al., 1992). Polistes wasp complete their life cycle in four stages,
pre-emergence phase, worker phase, reproductive phase and intermediate phase
(Figure 2b; Karsai et al., 1995).
The honey bee, Apis
mellifera queens are polyandrous. When they are about five days old they mate
with a large number (625) of males (Estoup et al., 1994; Palmer et al., 2000)
of diverse genetic backgrounds (Baudry et al., 1998). Honey bee colonies,
therefore, comprise multiple patrilines of workers, each sired by a different
male (Crozier et al., 1996). Because the males are haploid, their daughters
share 75 % of their alleles by descent. Conversely, workers that are daughters
of different males share only 25 % of their alleles; those derived from their
common queen mother. Task specialization has now been demonstrated for an
extraordinary array of honey bee behaviour including nectar and pollen foraging
(Calderone et al., 1988), caring for brood and removing dead larvae (Page et
al., 1989b), grooming nest mates (Frumhoff et al., 1988), removing corpses and
guarding the nest entrance (Robinson et al., 1988), collecting water (Kryger et
al., 2000), and thermoregulating the nest (Jones et al., 2004; Oldroyd et al.,
1994). It has long been speculated that task specialization provides colony
level benefits, and that genetically mediated diversity in task response thresholds
is important to the task allocation system in honey bees and by inference,
other polyandrous haplodiploid social insects (Bertram et al., 2003; Calderone
et al., 1989; Crozier et al., 1985; Fuchs et al., 1994; Myerscough et al.,
2004).
Honey bee colonies, are
able to regulate the internal temperature of their nests with great precision
(Jones et al., 2004; Moritz et al., 1992; Southwick, 1991; Heldmaier et al.,
1987). The workers regulate brood nest temperature depends on whether heating
or cooling is required (Seeley, 1985). Waxes are used for building brood and
storage cells and cuticular waxes minimize the loss of water across the
integument and protect from attack by microorganisms, parasitic insects, and
predators (Buckner, 1993). The queen substance is reportedly transmitted within
the hive attached to the body surfaces of worker bees as a result of grooming
behaviour (Seeley, 1979; Naumann, 1991). Drones deposit a long lasting
inhibitory pheromone on the combs to decrease the drone brood production where
it is perceived by the workers and the queen (Omholt, 1988). Tautz (1997)
suggests that the dance sites of the bees on the wax comb may be chemically
marked in some way because dancers keep to the same site during a foraging day.
Objectives of the present paper include, to study the nesting and social
behaviour between P. flavus and A. mellifera with parental care of their
offspring.
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Article source : Nesting biology and Social behaviour of Paper wasp (Polistes flavus) and Honey bee (Apis mellifera) in District Mansehra, Pakistan
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