Wing symmetry as affected by artificial feeding in honeybees colonies [electronic resource].

Includes references.

Wing asymmetry was used to measure the possible stress which could be created when we feed honeybee colony with sugar syrup in comparison with feeding with honey (control). By using 31 character of wing venation pattern on left and right forewing it could be stated that fluctuating asymmetry (FA) was higher in colonies fed on sugar syrup than those fed with diluted honey in most of the characters mesured. In contrary, directional asymmetry (DA) was not related to the type of feeding but to the time in which the experiment was conducted. The individual characters were combined and analyzed as composite fluctuating asymmetry (CFA) to maximize the probability of detecting FA-stress relationship when it existes. The result showed that CFA was significantly higher in sugar-feeding than in honey-feeding colonies.

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