Everything about Apis Mellifera Capensis totally explained
Apis mellifera capensis, the
Cape honey bee or
Cape bee is a southern
South African sub-species of the
Western honey bee.
Cape bee workers are uniquely able to lay
diploid, female eggs, by means of
thelytoky, whereas workers of other honey bee subspecies (and, in fact, unmated females of all other
eusocial insects) are able to lay only
haploid, male eggs.
The movement by
beekeepers of Cape honey bees into northern South Africa, where they don't naturally occur, has created a problem for the region's indigenous populations of
A. m. scutellata. If a female worker from a Cape honey bee colony enters a colony of
A. m. scutellata, she isn't attacked, partly due to her resemblance to the African bee queen. Now independent from her own colony, she may begin laying eggs, and since
A.m. capensis workers are capable of
parthenogenetic reproduction, that'll hatch as "clones" of herself, which will also lay eggs. As a result the
parasitic A. m. capensis workers increase in number within a host colony. This leads to the death of the host colony on which they depend. An important factor causing the death of a colony seems to be the dwindling numbers of
A. m. scutellata workers that perform foraging duties (
A. m. capensis workers are greatly under-represented in the foraging force of an an infected colony) owing to death of the queen, and, before queen death, competition for egg laying between
A. m. capensis workers and the queen. When the colony dies, the
capensis females will seek out a new host colony.
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