Comparisons of grooming behaviors between two honeybee species: Apis cerana and Apis mellifera

The grooming behaviors of honey bees have been a long-discussed subject among entomologists. These grooming behaviors include ‘allo-grooming’ which refers to ‘group’ grooming responses within the honeybee colonies and ‘auto-grooming’ which refers to the ‘self’ grooming responses of individual honey bees. The grooming behaviors of worker bees were recorded for data analysis to prove or disprove current research on the grooming behavioral responses of two species: the Apis cerana & the Apis mellifera. These two honey bee species were observed in petry dishes with a group of four bees allo-grooming and individual bees auto-grooming. Artificial methods have been used by several scientists to induce natural responses in insects in controlled environments. The goal was to place bees in a set environment to achieve enough data that would be significantly comparable between the two species.  The study results support previous research that the Apis cerana colony would display more significant ‘auto-grooming’ and ‘allo-grooming’ as compared to the Apis mellifera. The overall ‘auto-grooming' responses across both species were not significantly different, but the overall ‘allo-grooming’ response was significantly higher in the Apis cerana species. Further research will be focused on a colony swap experiment. This involves placing a honey bee of one of the species in a foster colony (the colony of the other species) and recording the behavioral responses.