Morphological characters of some important races and ecotypes of Turkish honeybees (Apis mellifera L.) - I

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine the morphological characters of some important honeybee (A. mellifera L.) races and ecotypes in Turkey. Experimental samples were collected from 6 different regions such as Central Anatolia Region (Beypazary), North Eastern Anatolia Region (Posof), Marmara Region (Gokceada). Thrace Region (Saray), Aegean Region (Fethiye) and Mediterranean Region (Erdemli). Although 41 morphological characters were measured, twenty one morphological characters such as length of cover hair on tergite 5, width of tomentum on tergite 4, width of stripe posterior of tomentum, index of tomentum, length of proboscis, length of femur, length of tibia, metatarsus length, metatarsus width, length of hind leg, width of tergite3 (longitudinal), width of tergite 4 (longitudinal), body size, width of sternite 3 (longitudinal), length wax plate of sternite 3 (longitudinal), width wax plate of sternite 3 (transversal), distance between wax plate of sternite 3, length of sternite 6 (longitudinal), width of sternite 6 (transversal) and sternum index were evaluated in this paper. There were not any variation between genotypes regarding length of tibia, length of metatarsus, length of 6. sternit, metatarsal and sternum index. On the other hand there were significant variation between genotypes in terms of other 16 characters. It was found that some genotypes have differentiation characters regarding their morphological structure.