240 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS COMPARATIVE NOTES ON HYMENOPTERAN PARASITOIDS IN BUMBLE BEE AND HONEY BEE COLONIES (HYMENOPTERA: APIDAE) REARED ADJACENTLY 1 James B. Whitfield 2 , Sydney A. Cameron 3 ABSTRACT: Colonies of both honey bees and bumble bees are often infested by parasitoids as well as by wax moths from several genera of the family Pyralidae. The nest associates in turn are parasitized by several groups of hymenopteran parasitoids. Colonies of bumble bees raised in close proximity to honey bee colonies provided an unanticipated opportunity to observe para-sitoids that might be able to switch from honey bees or their nest associates, to bumble bees or their nest associates, and vice versa. This natural experiment indicated that none of the lepi-dopteran nest associates were shared between both honey bee and bumble bee colonies. However, most of the hymenopteran parasitoids of Apis nest associates were found to parasitize bumble bee nest associates. Diagnostic illustrations of some of the parasitoids from the apid colonies are provided to facilitate future observations on these species. Bumble bees (Bombus and Psithyrus spp.) and honey bees (Apis spp.) share taxonomic assignment to the same family (Apidae) and the habit of being social. Nevertheless, they exhibit vastly different forms of nest con-struction, colony cycles (Michener, 1974) and division of labor (Cameron 1 989). A number of North American records have been published on the nest associates, parasites, and parasitoids of each of these two groups (e.g. Prison 1926; Holm 1960; Milum 1939; Plath 1922, 1924), although little has been reported on the ability or tendency of their respective nest associates and nat-ural enemies to share hosts. Honey bees are not native to North America and neither are most of their nest associates, largely due to the transport of these bees by humans. During the summer of 1987, we had the opportunity to make direct observations on nest associates and natural enemies of both bumble bees and honey bees reared in close proximity to each other, and to record which of these bee-associated insects were found in nests of both groups. Below we describe the results of this survey, briefly suggest some possible explanations for the patterns observed, and provide some description of some of the para-sitoids as an aid for future identification in field studies. 1 Received April 29, 1993. Accepted June 14, 1993. f\ * Department of Entomology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. Current address: Department of Entomology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701 3 Department of Entomology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. Current address: Departments of Biological Sciences and Entomology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701 . All correspondence should be addressed to this author. ENT. NEWS 104(5): 240-248, November & December, 1993
BioStor
