Queen morphometric and reproductive characters of Apis mellifera jemenitica, a native honey bee to Saudi Arabia

Ten traits of morphological characters and reproductive organs of newly emerged virgin queens of native and imported honey bee races, Apis mellifera jemenitica Ruttner (AMJ) and Apis mellifera carnica Pollman (AMC), were measured. The results for the comparison between the AMC and AMJ queens showed significant differences in most cases. The virgin AMC queens showed significantly increased body weight (165.9 +/- 9.8 mg) over that of AMJ (137.8 +/- 7.9 mg) in the two seasons of the study. In addition, the AMC queens had significantly higher values than those of AMJ for all tested morphological traits, including the head capsule (2.61 x 2.44 mm versus 2.45 x 2.23 mm), right mandible (1.29 x 0.38 mm versus 1.18 x 0.37 mm), forewing (9.39 x 3.10 mm versus 9.17 x 3.00 mm), and the length of the 3rd + 4th abdominal tergites (5.95 mm versus 5.57 mm), respectively. The number of ovarioles of the right ovary in the AMC queens was significantly higher (157.0 +/- 14.9) than that (146.6 +/- 13.9) of AMJ. The diameters of the spermathecae were 1.253 and 1.230 for AMC and AMJ, respectively, with significant differences between the two races in the 2nd season of the study.