Nesting & Social Behavior of Wasps and Honey Bees in Mansehra | InformativeBD

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.

 Read more : Acrotylini Grasshoppers of Pakistan: A Taxonomic Study | InformativeBD 

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.

Reference

Billen J, Ito F. 2006. The basicoxal gland, a new exocrine structure in poneromorph ants (Hymenoptera, Formicidae). Journal of Zoology 87(4), 291-296, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1463-6395.2006.00244.x

Chaudhry GU, Chaudhry MI, Khan SM. 1996. Survey of insect fauna of forest of Pakistan. Pakistan forest Institute Peshawar 1-167.

Cresson, A. 1868. Identification and distribution of Polistes flavus. Natural Insect History Museum 45, 77-85.

Deneubourg JL, Goss S. 1989. Collective patterns and decision making. Ethology Ecological Evolution 1, 259–311.

Eberhard MJ. 1978. Temporary queens in Metapolybia wasps: non-reproductive helpers without altruism. Nature Science 200, 441–443.

Eisner T. 1994. Integumental slime and wax secretion: defensive adaptations of sawfly. Chemical Ecology of Insects 20, 2743–2749.

Foster KR, Ratnieks FL. 2001. Paternity, reproduction and conflict in vespine wasps: a model system for testing kin selection predictions. Behavioural Ecological Socio biology 50, 1–8, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s002650100336

Hermann HR, Dirks TF. 1975. Biology of Polistes annularis (Hymenoptera: Vespidae) behaviour. Insect Psychology 82, 97-108.

Hunt JH. 1984. Adult nourishment during larval provisioning in a primitively eusocial wasp Polistes metricus. Insect Sociology 31, 452-460.

Kikuta N, Tsuji K. 1999. Queen and worker policing in the monogynous and monoandrous hymenopteran species. Behavioural Ecological Sociobiology 46, 180-189.

Jeanne RL. 1972. The addictiveness of social wasp nest architecture. Review Biology 50, 267-287.

Matsuura M. 1991. V. vilutina. In: The Social Biology of Wasps, K.G. Ross and R.W. Matthews, (Eds.). Pubio Association Ithiolond 232-262.

Norman F, Johnson T, Charles J, Triplehorn A. 2004. Borror’s Introduction to the Study of Insects. Behavioural Ecological Sociobiology 7, 457-463.

Oster GF, Wilson EO. 1978.Caste and Ecology in the Social Insects, Princeton University Press, Princeton. Animal Behaviour 77, 234-238.

Owen J. 1962. The behavior of a social wasp Polistes fustacus at the nest, with special reference to differences between individuals. PhD Thesis, University of Michigan, 1-180.

Rossi AM, Hunt JH. 1988. Honey supplementation and its developmental consequences: evidence for food limitation in a paper wasp, Polistes metricus. Behavioural Ecological Sociobiology 13, 437-442.

Seeley TD, Camazine S, Sneyd J. 1991. Collective decision-making in honey bees: how colonies choose among nectar sources. Behavioural Ecological Sociobiology 28, 277-290.

Smith F. 1856. Life strategy and mortality factors of Sceliphron laetum (Smith) (Hymenoptera: Sphecidae). Australian Journal of Insect Ecology 4, 181-186.

Theraulaz G, Bonabeau E. 1995. Coordination in distributed building of wasps. Nature Science 269, 686-688.

Wenzel JW, Pickering J. 1991. Cooperative foraging, productivity, and the central limit theorem. Insect Ecology 88, 36-38.

Wilson A. 1990. Use of XRD in the elemental analysis of solid materials. American Journal of Physics 47, 88-91.

Article source : Nesting biology and Social behaviour of Paper wasp (Polistes flavus) and Honey bee (Apis mellifera) in District Mansehra, Pakistan