Avaliação da agressividade de abelhas Apis mellifera L. africanizadas no sertão da Paraíba.

Abstract

The aggression of Africanized bees is considered by many as a strong ally beekeepers to prevent theft of their production. This study aims to assess the aggressiveness of the bees Apis mellifera L. Africanized in the backlands of Paraiba, through tests of defensive behavior, for the production of queen bees calm and productive. The survey was conducted in UFCG - POMBAL - PB County and the municipalities of Pombal and Sousa in the backlands of Paraiba. Apiaries are composed of 30 clusters, housed in standard Langstroth hives. Of these, 10 colonies were randomly selected. The tests were carried out aggression in each hive chosen in 3 replications, in times of 07:00 and 10:00 hours (H1), from 12:00 to 14:00 hours (H2) and 15:00 to 17:00 hours (H3), and during winter (April 2012) and dry (August 2012). Aggression was measured by the method of Stort (1974) with some adaptations ours, where the following observations were made: Time for the fury of the bees; occur for the first time in a sting suede, number of stings left in suede trapped in a container circular, Number of bees that attacked after 1 minute; Distance bees chased the handler, and the time to calm the bees in the colony. Data were analyzed by SAS statistical software version 9.0 and SigmaPlot for Windows version 12.0. After analysis of normality by the Shapiro-Wilk test, and homogeneity of variance by Bartlett, the parameters evaluated by analysis of variance followed by Tukey's test and their interrelationships through the Pearson correlation test. Data analysis by the method of Ward are represented in a dendrogram. To the fury of bees observed that during winter in times ranging from 7:00 to 10:00 hours and from 12:00 to 14:00 hours of the day with figures of, respectively, 4.03 and 3.46 s, being statistically different from those observed in the period from 15:00 to 17:00 (2.56 s). During the dry season, we observe the shorter infuriating between 12:00 to 14:00 hours and from 15:00 to 17:00 hours of the day (3.93 and 2.76 s), being the period of greatest aggressiveness of bees. Compared bee behavior between the winter and dry, we observed that the time infuriating bees did not differ statistically between the hours of 15:00 to 17:00 hours. Among all analyzed hives observe that they have characteristics in common, regardless of place of origin and can group them in order to qualify them as aggressive or tame.