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The Cape honey bee or Cape bee (''Apis mellifera capensis'') is a southern
South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...
n subspecies of the
western honey bee The western honey bee or European honey bee (''Apis mellifera'') is the most common of the 7–12 species of honey bees worldwide. The genus name ''Apis'' is Latin for 'bee', and ''mellifera'' is the Latin for 'honey-bearing' or 'honey-carrying', ...
. They play a major role in South African agriculture and the
economy of the Western Cape The economy of the Western Cape in South Africa is dominated by the city of Cape Town, which accounted for 72.4% of the Western Cape's economic activity in 2023. The single largest contributor to the region's economy is the financial and busin ...
by pollinating crops and producing
honey Honey is a sweet and viscous substance made by several species of bees, the best-known of which are honey bees. Honey is made and stored to nourish bee colonies. Bees produce honey by gathering and then refining the sugary secretions of pl ...
in the
Western Cape The Western Cape ( ; , ) is a provinces of South Africa, province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the List of South African provinces by area, fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , an ...
region of South Africa. The species is endemic to the Western Cape region of South Africa on the coastal side of the Cape Fold mountain range. The Cape honey bee is unique among honey bee subspecies because workers can lay
diploid Ploidy () is the number of complete sets of chromosomes in a cell, and hence the number of possible alleles for autosomal and pseudoautosomal genes. Here ''sets of chromosomes'' refers to the number of maternal and paternal chromosome copies, ...
, female eggs, by means of
thelytoky Thelytoky (from the Ancient Greek, Greek θῆλυς ''thēlys'' "female" and τόκος ''tókos'' "birth") is a type of parthenogenesis and is the absence of mating and subsequent production of all female diploid offspring as for example in aph ...
, while workers of other subspecies (and, in fact, unmated females of virtually all other
eusocial Eusociality ( Greek 'good' and social) is the highest level of organization of sociality. It is defined by the following characteristics: cooperative brood care (including care of offspring from other individuals), overlapping generations wit ...
insects) can only lay
haploid Ploidy () is the number of complete sets of chromosomes in a cell (biology), cell, and hence the number of possible alleles for Autosome, autosomal and Pseudoautosomal region, pseudoautosomal genes. Here ''sets of chromosomes'' refers to the num ...
, male eggs. Not all workers are capable of thelytoky – only those expressing the thelytoky phenotype, which is controlled by a recessive allele at a single locus (workers must be homozygous at this locus to be able to reproduce by thelytoky). The bee tends to be darker in colour than the African honey bee ( ''A.m. scutellata'') with an almost entirely black
abdomen The abdomen (colloquially called the gut, belly, tummy, midriff, tucky, or stomach) is the front part of the torso between the thorax (chest) and pelvis in humans and in other vertebrates. The area occupied by the abdomen is called the abdominal ...
, this differentiates it from African honey bees which have a yellow band on the upper abdomen. Other differences that might allow for differentiation of the subspecies from African honey bees are their propensity to lay multiple eggs in a single cell and the raised capping on their brood cells.


Interaction with African bees

In 1990
beekeeper A beekeeper is a person who keeps honey bees, a profession known as beekeeping. The term beekeeper refers to a person who keeps honey bees in beehives, boxes, or other receptacles. The beekeeper does not control the creatures. The beekeeper ow ...
s transported Cape honey bees into northern South Africa, where they do not occur naturally. This has created a problem for the region's African honey bee populations. Reproducing diploid females without fertilization bypasses the eusocial insect hierarchy; an individual more related to her own offspring than to the offspring of the queen will trade her
inclusive fitness Inclusive fitness is a conceptual framework in evolutionary biology first defined by W. D. Hamilton in 1964. It is primarily used to aid the understanding of how social traits are expected to evolve in structured populations. It involves partit ...
benefits for individual fitness benefit of producing her own young. This opens up the possibility of social parasitism: If a female worker expressing the thelytokous phenotype from a Cape honey bee colony can enter a colony of ''A.m. scutellata'', she can potentially take over that African bee colony. A behavioral consequence of the thelytoky phenotype is queen pheromonal mimicry, which means the parasitic workers can sneak their eggs in to be raised with those from the African bees. Although their eggs are removed by other workers, African honey bee workers are not efficient enough to remove every egg, it has been suggested that is because they're similar to the honey bee queen's eggs. As a result, the
parasitic Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives (at least some of the time) on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The ent ...
''A.m. capensis'' workers increase in number within a host colony, while numbers of the ''A.m. scutellata'' workers that perform foraging duties (''A.m. capensis'' workers are greatly under-represented in the foraging force of an infested colony) dwindle, owing to competition in egg laying between ''A.m. capensis'' workers and the queen, and to the eventual death of the queen. This causes the death of the colony upon which the ''capensis'' females depended, so they will then seek out a new host colony.


Thelytokous parthenogenesis and maintenance of heterozygosity

Parthenogenesis Parthenogenesis (; from the Greek + ) is a natural form of asexual reproduction in which the embryo develops directly from an egg without need for fertilization. In animals, parthenogenesis means the development of an embryo from an unfertiliz ...
is a natural form of reproduction in which growth and development of
embryo An embryo ( ) is the initial stage of development for a multicellular organism. In organisms that reproduce sexually, embryonic development is the part of the life cycle that begins just after fertilization of the female egg cell by the male sp ...
s occur without
fertilisation Fertilisation or fertilization (see spelling differences), also known as generative fertilisation, syngamy and impregnation, is the fusion of gametes to give rise to a zygote and initiate its development into a new individual organism or of ...
. Thelytoky is a particular form of
parthenogenesis Parthenogenesis (; from the Greek + ) is a natural form of asexual reproduction in which the embryo develops directly from an egg without need for fertilization. In animals, parthenogenesis means the development of an embryo from an unfertiliz ...
in which the development of a female individual occurs from an unfertilized egg.
Automixis Automixis is the fusion of (typically haploid) nuclei or gametes derived from the same individual. The term covers several reproductive mechanisms, some of which are parthenogenetic. Diploidy might be restored by the doubling of the chromosomes ...
is a form of thelytoky, but there are different kinds of automixis. The kind of automixis relevant here is one in which two haploid products from the same meiosis combine to form a diploid zygote. Cape honey bee workers expressing the thelytoky phenotype can produce progeny by automictic thelytoky with central fusion (see diagram). Central fusion allows
heterozygosity Zygosity (the noun, zygote, is from the Greek "yoked," from "yoke") () is the degree to which both copies of a chromosome or gene have the same genetic sequence. In other words, it is the degree of similarity of the alleles in an organism. Mos ...
to be largely maintained. The
oocyte An oocyte (, oöcyte, or ovocyte) is a female gametocyte or germ cell involved in reproduction. In other words, it is an immature ovum, or egg cell. An oocyte is produced in a female fetus in the ovary during female gametogenesis. The female ger ...
s that undergo automixis display a greater than 10-fold reduction in the rate of crossover recombination. The low recombination rate in automictic oocytes favors maintenance of heterozygosity and the avoidance of
inbreeding depression Inbreeding depression is the reduced biological fitness caused by loss of genetic diversity as a consequence of inbreeding, the breeding of individuals closely related genetically. This loss of genetic diversity results from small population siz ...
.


Impact on other animals

Although the Cape honey bee is regarded as being less aggressive than the African honey bee (''A.m. scutellata)'' it can still be dangerous to people and other animals especially if the bees swarm and become defensive. In 2021 a group of sixty African penguins were killed by Cape honey bees in a very rare incidence of the penguins coming into contact with a local hive.


Conservation status

Although the species is officially classified as "not threatened" concerns exist that the subspecies might be declining in its natural range in the Western Cape. Threats to the subspecies include reduced access to flowering plants for forage, disease, parasites, and the use of pesticides and insecticides. In December 2008 American foulbrood disease spread to the Cape honey bee population in the Western Cape infecting and wiping out an estimated forty percent of the region's honey bee population by 2015. Over 300 hives were destroyed and more hives threatened with starvation in 2017 when large fires swept through the Knysna area of the Western Cape. Due to the impact of the fires on the bee's already threatened status resources were donated to set up additional hive stands and basil and
borage Borage ( or ; ''Borago officinalis''), also known as starflower, is an annual herb in the flowering plant family Boraginaceae native to the Mediterranean region. Although the plant contains small amounts of pyrrolizidine alkaloids, some parts ar ...
after the fire to provide food to the bees. Additional fires, at the same time, in the Thornhill area (near Port Elizabeth) destroyed a further 700 hives. The use of
pesticide Pesticides are substances that are used to control pests. They include herbicides, insecticides, nematicides, fungicides, and many others (see table). The most common of these are herbicides, which account for approximately 50% of all p ...
s by the agricultural sector is suspected of being responsible for at least one large incident of large scale hive death with an estimated 100 hives killed off on Constantia wine farms. South African non-profit
Honeybee Heroes Honeybee Heroes is a honeybee sanctuary and beekeeper education non-profit organisation founded in 2020 by Chris Oosthuizen in the Overberg region of South Africa. Honeybee Heroes seeks to increase population numbers of the endemic Capensis ho ...
' Adopt-A-Hive initiative is a conservation project for the Cape honey bee. Currently the organisation maintains over 700 honey bee hives dedicated to improving the population numbers of the Cape honey bee in the Western Cape.


Gallery

File:Cape Honeybee hive in hollow.jpg, A wild Cape honey bee hive in the hollow of a tree File:Cape Honey Bee swarm.jpg, A bee swarm of Cape honey bees File:Cape Honeybee gorging.jpg, Domestically kept Cape honey bees on a hive frame with
honeycomb A honeycomb is a mass of Triangular prismatic honeycomb#Hexagonal prismatic honeycomb, hexagonal prismatic cells built from beeswax by honey bees in their beehive, nests to contain their brood (eggs, larvae, and pupae) and stores of honey and pol ...
File:Newlands bees 019.JPG, Honey comb


References


External links


Featured Creatures Website: Cape honey bee (''Apis mellifera capensis'')
— ''on the UF / IFAS website''. {{Authority control mellifera capensis Fauna of South Africa Insects of South Africa