The average worker bee will only make around 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. Honey bees beat their wings around 190 times a second that’s 11,400 times a minute! The speed of their flapping wings is why we hear the “buzzing” noise when they fly past. We really don’t get what all the buzz is about! We’ll try to keep the bee puns to a minimum because bee puns always sting. Published by Oxford University Press GigaScience.It’s World Bee day and we’ve compiled some interesting facts about our flying friends. The extensive collection of wing images available on the Zenodo website can be used to identify the geographic origin of unknown samples and therefore assist in the monitoring and conservation of honey bee biodiversity in Europe.Īpis mellifera biodiversity conservation geometric morphometrics honey bee wing.

We compared the data with available reference samples for lineage and found general agreement with them. We present an R script that describes the workflow for analyzing the data and identifying an unknown sample. The wing images are accompanied by the coordinates of 19 landmarks and the geographic coordinates of the sampling locations. Here, we provide an unprecedented collection of 26,481 honey bee wing images representing 1,725 samples from 13 European countries. However, wing geometric morphometrics is challenging due to the lack of reference data that can be reliably used for comparisons between different geographic regions. Therefore, it can be easily used by both scientists and beekeepers. This method is fast, is low cost, and does not require expensive equipment. One of the methods that can be used for this is the geometric morphometrics of wings. A crucial step for the protection of honey bee biodiversity is reliable differentiation between native and nonnative bees. In consequence, some honey bee populations that are well adapted to the local environment are threatened with extinction. The biodiversity of the honey bee in parts of its native range is endangered by migratory beekeeping and commercial breeding. The honey bee (Apis mellifera) is an ecologically and economically important species that provides pollination services to natural and agricultural systems. 13 Department of Zoology and Animal Welfare, University of Agriculture in Krakow, Krakow 31-425, Poland.

12 Centre for Agricultural Genomics and Biotechnology, University of Debrecen, Debrecen 4032, Hungary.11 Faculty of Ecological Agriculture, EDUCONS University, Sremska Kamenica 21208, Serbia.10 Ankara University, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Ankara University, Beşevler-Ankara 06100, Turkey.9 Agricultural Institute of Slovenia, Ljubljana SI-1000, Slovenia.8 Lab of Agricultural Zoology and Entomology, Agricultural University of Athens, Athens 11855, Greece.7 Department of Apiculture, Institute of Animal Science-Ellinikos Georgikos Organismos 'DIMITRA', Nea Moudania 63200, Greece.6 Centre in Digitalization and Intelligent Robotics, Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Campus de Santa Apolónia, Bragança 5300-253, Portugal.5 Laboratório Associado para a Sustentabilidade e Tecnologia em Regiões de Montanha (SusTEC), Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Campus de Santa Apolónia, Bragança 5300-253, Portugal.4 Centro de Investigação de Montanha, Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Campus de Santa Apolónia, Bragança 5300-253, Portugal.3 Faculty of Agrobiotechnical Sciences, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Osijek 31000, Croatia.2 Honeybee Genetics and Breeding Laboratory, Institute for Beekeeping Research and Development, Bucharest 013975, Romania.1 Department of Genetics, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Kazimierz Wielki University, Bydgoszcz 85-090, Poland.

Honey bee wing