Book Description

Stingless bees/Dammer bees are the smallest of the honey producing bees. Trigona and Melipona are the most important geera of stingless bees. Trigona is the largest and most widely distributed genus, which incluse 130 species under ten sub-genera. the present studies were taken with the following objectives 1) to study nesting charateristics, biology and seasonal variations, 2) to study foraging behaviour of Trigona iridipennis Smith in comparison with Apis cerena indica, 3) to identity the major food sources of T. iridipennis and A. cerena, 4) to study pollination potentiality of stinglees bee T. iridipennis on certain crops. The total period required from oviposition to adult emergence was 53.30 days comprising 5.75, 12.70, 35.30 days for egg, larvae and pupal stages, respectively. The length of this period was 2.53 times more than that of A. cerana. The marked adults of T. iridipennis had a life span ranging between 80-87 days. The time spent by different species of honeybees in collection of pollen was maximum at 0800 hrs and for nectar from pistillate and staminate flowers was at 1600 hrs. The flower drop in control plot (89.50 %) was found to be significantly higher over other treatments. Maximum fruit set, fruit weight and fruit volume was recorded in open pollinated plot than T. iridipennis caged and control plots. T. iridipennis contributed for 61.00 per cent fruit set while it was only 10.50 per cent in control plot. The germination percentage was found significantly higher in the seeds of open and T. iridipennis pollinated seeds compared to seeds from control plot.