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Apis mellifera capensis

 

 
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Apis mellifera capensis
 
 
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Apis mellifera capensis, the Cape honey bee or Cape
Cape of Good Hope

The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headlands and bays on the Atlantic Ocean coast of South Africa. There is a very common misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa and the dividing point between the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Oceans, but in fact the southernmost point is Cape Agulhas, about 150 kilometres t...
 bee is a southern South Africa
South Africa

The Republic of South Africa, also known by Official names of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of the continent of Africa....
n sub-species of the Western honey bee. Cape bee workers are uniquely able to lay diploid, female eggs, by means of thelytoky
Thelytoky

Thelytoky comes from the Greek language thely, meaning "female", and tok, meaning "birth". Thelytokous parthenogenesis is a type of parthenogenesis in which females are produced from unfertilized eggs....
, whereas workers of other honey bee subspecies (and, in fact, unmated females of virtually all other eusocial insects) are able to lay only haploid, male eggs.

The movement by beekeeper
Beekeeper

A beekeeper is a person who keeps honey bees for the purposes of securing commodities such as honey, beeswax, pollen; pollination fruits and vegetables; raising Queen and bees for sale to other farmers; and/or for purposes satisfying natural scientific curiosity....
s of Cape honey bees into northern South Africa, where they do not naturally occur, has created a problem for the region's indigenous populations of A. m. scutellata
African bee

The African honey bee is a subspecies of the Western honey bee. It is native to central and southern Africa, though at the southern extreme it is replaced by the Cape honey bee, Apis mellifera capensis....
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Apis mellifera capensis, the Cape honey bee or Cape
Cape of Good Hope

The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headlands and bays on the Atlantic Ocean coast of South Africa. There is a very common misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa and the dividing point between the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Oceans, but in fact the southernmost point is Cape Agulhas, about 150 kilometres t...
 bee is a southern South Africa
South Africa

The Republic of South Africa, also known by Official names of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of the continent of Africa....
n sub-species of the Western honey bee. Cape bee workers are uniquely able to lay diploid, female eggs, by means of thelytoky
Thelytoky

Thelytoky comes from the Greek language thely, meaning "female", and tok, meaning "birth". Thelytokous parthenogenesis is a type of parthenogenesis in which females are produced from unfertilized eggs....
, whereas workers of other honey bee subspecies (and, in fact, unmated females of virtually all other eusocial insects) are able to lay only haploid, male eggs.

The movement by beekeeper
Beekeeper

A beekeeper is a person who keeps honey bees for the purposes of securing commodities such as honey, beeswax, pollen; pollination fruits and vegetables; raising Queen and bees for sale to other farmers; and/or for purposes satisfying natural scientific curiosity....
s of Cape honey bees into northern South Africa, where they do not naturally occur, has created a problem for the region's indigenous populations of A. m. scutellata
African bee

The African honey bee is a subspecies of the Western honey bee. It is native to central and southern Africa, though at the southern extreme it is replaced by the Cape honey bee, Apis mellifera capensis....
. If a female worker from a Cape honey bee colony enters a colony of A. m. scutellata, she is not 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, they will 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 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.