Morphometrics of the indian honey bee from Tamil Nadu

Morphological features of Indian honey bee Apis cerana indica (F.) in Tamil Nadu were studied using multivariate analysis for 35 quantitative characters. These characters statistically dispersed significantly (p<0.05) in the localities explore. High inter colonial variances at three regions were found associated with major geographical features. A cluster analysis using six characters grouped the bees of 60 colonies from 29 locations into 4 morphoclusters, first Principal Component explained 26.63% of the total variance in morphometrics. Higher factor loadings were found with proboscis length and 6^th sternite length. The second Principal Component explained 48.81% and had higher factor loadings with body length and hind wing length followed by basitarsus width and wing angle 42⁰ and 69.18% in discriminating various populations. The results showed a high degree of variations, which got correlated with geographical parameters. Bees from the high altitude areas were clearly larger and darker compared to those from lowaltitude.