Discrimination of Some Anatolian Honeybee (Apis Mellifera L.) Races and Ecotypes by Using Morphological Characteristics

Abstract

Thirty-one morphological characteristics of randomly selected honeybees known to come from each of six populations were examined for differences. Multivariate discriminant analysis was employed to describe the differential features of observations from 6 known Anatolian honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) races and ecotypes. As a consequence of the statistical analysis it was found that length of hair on the tergite 5, width of tomentum on tergite 4, width of tregite 3, distance between wax mirrors, length of cubital vein b, angles on front wing venation (A<inf>4</inf>, B<inf>4</inf>, D<inf>7</inf>, G1<inf>2</inf>, L<inf>13</inf> and O<inf>26</inf>) were significant (P<0.01), and sufficient enough to discriminate between the populations. However, 93.72% of the total variation was explained by the first three canonical discriminant functions.