MORPHOMETRIC TECHNIQUES DO NOT DETECT INTERMEDIATE AND LOW-LEVELS OF AFRICANIZATION IN HONEY-BEE (HYMENOPTERA, APIDAE) COLONIES

We tested three different morphometric methods used to identify Africa nized honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) colonies and determined the correl ative relationships of their associated discriminant scores and colony defensive behavior. Workers within and between experimental colonies varied in the percentage of their genotype that was of African origin. Morphometric scores of colonies were compared with two defensive beha vior traits: the time it took for the first worker in a colony to resp ond to, and sting, a moving leather-patch target, and the total number of strings received in the target during a 60-s interval following th e first sting. All identification methods correctly classified all of the colonies that were presumed to be 100% Africanized or European. Ho wever, <45% of the hybrid samples were scored as Africanized. In all c ases, as the level of Africanization decreased, so did the sensitivity and accuracy of the method. Correlations between morphometric scores and defensive behavior were significant when extreme genotypes were in cluded in the analyses, but no method correlated with samples ranging in the interval >0 but <50% Africanized. Implications are discussed of using these and alternative identification methods in regulatory prog rams.