Influence of the workers bee behavioral status on the preoviposition period and survival of queens of Melipona quadrifasciata Lep. (HYMENOPTERA:MELIPONINI) in laboratory conditions. / Influência do status comportamental das operárias sobre o período de pré-oviposição e sobrevivência de rainhas de Melipona quadrifasciata Lep. (Hymenoptera: Meliponini) em condições de laboratório

Iolando Brito Fagundes

In this work it was aimed at a) to investigate the influence of the workers bee behavioral status of different origins in the recognition process and defensive behavior; b) the influence of the age of the queens and of the workers bee behavioral status in the acceptance process of virgin queens; c) influence of the workers bee behavioral status on the survival and preoviposition period of queens of M. quadrifasciata in laboratory conditions. In the first chapter three trials were accomplished (aggression initiative, number of fights with the time and occurrence of injuries), where workers bee of different origins groups and behavioral status were confronted in a neutral arena. In the controls situation, no happened any aggressive interaction among the confronted groups. The results verified for the experimental group they indicate that the behavioral status and the degree of the workers bee experience modulate the type of aggressive response the conspecific non-nestmates ones. Encounters between groups of forager workers and of foragers with nurse workers, they resulted in mutual aggressiveness and high number of injured individuals. Result contrary to the found for newly-emerged workers, that, although they have begun some confrontations with forager or nurse workers, these never resulted in counterattacks, and consequently, in injured workers. Though, confronts between groups of nurse workers and nurses with newly-emerged workers, havent result in perceptible physical damages. In the second chapter of this thesis, virgin queens of zero to three days were introduced in mini-colonies formed by populations of nurse or foraging bees. It was verified that the rejection of queens by foraging bees increases with the age of the queens, being the recently-emerged queens more tolerated. However in the encounters with nurse bees, most of the virgin queens they were accepted independently of the age, indicating that foraging bees and nurse bees of M. quadrifasciata react in different ways to the presence of virgin queens. In the third chapter of this thesis, copulated queens in laboratory conditions were introduced in mini-colonies constituted by foraging bees, nurse bees, recently-emerged bees and mixed population. We verified that the worker bees age influences the time of pre-oviposition and survival of queens of M. quadrifasciata in laboratory conditions. The results indicate that, in colonies constituted by nurse bees the mortality was low, the number of queens in posture was elevated and the pre-oviposition period was reduced. In colonies with mixed population, the pre-oviposition period was similar to the colonies with nurse bees, however, the survival of the queens was shorter than in the treatment previously referred. However, in colonies constituted by recently-emerged bees, there was elevated mortality, delayed posture and reduced percentage of queens in posture. In colonies formed by forager workers no posture happened and all the queens died.

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