Activity of hypopharengeal gland in secreting honey-elaborating enzymes in Carniolan and Egyptian honeybees

Al-Sherif, Aliaa A.; Mazeed, Adel M.; Hagag, El-Seid E.

doi:10.21608/eajbsa.2012.14827

Activity of hypopharengeal gland in secreting honey-elaborating enzymes in Carniolan and Egyptian honeybees

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Beekeeping Section, Plant Protection Institute, Agriculture Research Center, Ministry of Agriculture.

² Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Entomology, Cairo University, Egypt

³ Beekeeping Section, Plant Protection Institute, Agriculture Research Center, Ministry of Agriculture

10.21608/eajbsa.2012.14827

Abstract

In this study, the activity of invertase, glucose oxidase and diastase enzymes in
hypopharengeal gland were determined for Egyptian and Carniolan honeybees. Three
colonies were chosen randomly from the population of each race for assaying the
enzymes activity on three ages of worker bees: Newly emerged, 10-15 day old and
foragers. The results show that the hypopharengeal gland expressed the three enzymes
in different quantities in the three ages except invertase which could not be detected in
newly emereged bees of Carniolan race. Generally, diastase is significantly more
secreted than invertase and glucose oxidase, and the secretion of newly emerged bees
is significantly less pronounced than in nurse and foraging age. The significant
differences between the two races were obviously expressed in foragers for invertase
and diastase enzyme, and in nurse bees for glucose oxidase in favor of Carniolan race,
whereas the difference was significantly higher in newly emerged bees for Diastase
and invertase in Egyptian bees. This result establishes different views of the secretion
trend of the three enzymes in the two honeybee races, which may considered as racespecific
characteristic.

Keywords