Tolerance of two honey bee races to various temperature and relative humidity gradients

Journal Article

Mohamed, Ahmad Al Khazim Al Ghamdi , Hossam F. Abou-Shaara , Abdelsalam A. . 2012

• المجلة \ الصحيفة: Environmental and Experimental Biology
• رقم العدد: 10
• رقم الإصدار السنوي: 2012
• الصفحات: 133-138

مستخلص المنشور

The importance of temperature and relative humidity for honey bees is well known, and all activities of honey bee colonies are under the control of these factors. Temperature, in particularly, is very important for internal as well as external activities of honey bee colonies. Maintaining a suitable range of temperature from 33 to 36 °C inside colonies is very important for honey bees (Petz et al. 2004). Deviation from this range can affect the developmental period of honey bee immature stages, emergence rate (Tautz et al. 2003), colour of emerged bees (DeGrandi-Hoffman et al. 1993), wing morphology (Ken et al. 2005), learning ability (Tautz et al. 2003), adult brain (Groh et al. 2004) and disease prevalence. Also, ambient temperature has a great effect on foraging activity, as high temperature has a negative effect on bee foraging (Cooper, Schaffer 1985; Al-Qarni 2006; Blazyte-Cereskiene et al. 2010). Moreover, very low temperature below 10 °C can prevent flight activity (Joshi, Joshi 2010).