Indian Journal of Ecology

Studies on selective breeding for development of less stinging Apis mellifera colonies were carried out at Campus Apiary, Department of Entomology, Punjab Agricultural University, and at isolated mating yard at PAU Seed Farm, Ladhowal during 2021-2022. Ten least stinging colonies were selected as parent colonies from the stock of 100 colonies screened for defensive behaviour. Five daughter queens were reared from each mother queen colony. The drones were multiplied from only two of the 10 selected least stinging colonies. Selective mating between the newly reared gynes and drones was carried out at the isolated mating yard. The defensive behaviour of the colonies was assessed by alarm pheromone assay. The comparative assessment of the defensive behaviour between selected mother colony, F₁ colonies and control (unselected colonies) revealed that both mother and F₁ colonies had lesser number of stings/min, took more time to first sting and had lesser number of bees recruited for defense thus depicting defensive behaviour to be heritable. Among the 50 F₁ colonies, 62 per cent colonies showed improvement in this trait compared to just 10 per cent in the original stock (100 colonies). Correlation among the three defensive traits revealed that the number of stings/min was positively correlated with the number of bees recruited for defense and inversely with the time taken for first sting.