| A Biometrical Study
of the Influence of Size of Brood Cell Upon the Size and Variability
of the Honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) by Roy A. Grout, 1931 |
| EXPERIMENTAL The influence of the increase in the size of the brood cells upon the size of the worker bees from colony 18 is shown in Table 2. The data presented in this table consist of the arithmetic mean and the standard deviation of the arithmetic mean of the bees from the three sizes of cells and the mean difference and the standard deviation of the mean difference between each of the three groups. The measurements presented in the table are dry weight, length of right fore wing, width of right fore wing, sum of the width of the third and fourth tergites and length of proboscis. The mean differences which are statistically significant are starred. An examination of Table2 shows that between the means of the measurements taken on the bees from size of cell "A" and size of cell "B" there is only one case where the difference is significant. This is in the case of dry weight and in a negative direction. Table 2 further shows that there is a decrease in the length of the right fore wing between size of cell "A" and size of cell "B", but the mean difference in this case is not significant. The other three measurements, width of right fore wing, sum of the widths of the third and the fourth tergites and length of proboscis show an increase in their respective means but the mean difference is not significant. An examination of the arithmetic means of bees from size of cell "B" and size of cell "C" shows that the mean differences between the three groups are significant with the exception of the width of the right fore wing. In the case of the right fore wing there is an increase between the "B" and "C" groups but the increase is not statistically significant. An examination of the arithmetic means of the bees from size of cell "A" and size of cell "C" tells a similar story. The mean differences of all measurements are significant except for the measurement of the width of the right fore wing, whose means, while showing an increase from size of cell "A" to size of cell "C", do not show a significant mean difference. The influence of the size of the brood cell upon the size of various measurements taken on the bees from colony 21 is shown by a comparison of the arithmetic means of the measurements of the bees from size of cell "A", size of cell "B" and size of cell "C", respectively, in Table 3. Data presented in this table includes the erithmetic mean and it's standard deviation for each measurement of the bees from each size of cell and the mean difference and its standard deviation for each measurement between the means of the bees of each group. The measurements taken on the parts of the bees of colony 21 and presented in Table 3 are dry weight, length of the right fore wing, width of the right fore wing, sum of the widths of the third and fourth targites and length of proboscis. The mean differences which are statistically significent are starred. An examination of Table 3 shows that the mean differences for the measurements between the bees from size of cell "A" and size of cell "B" are all significant except for dry weight. There is a decrease in the dry weight of the bees of these samples as the size of the cell is increased, but the decrease is not large enough to be significant. There are no significant mean differences between the bees from size of cell "B" and size of cell "C" although all measurements, except the width of the right fore wing, show an increase as the size of cell is increased. An examination of the mean differences of the measurements on bees from size of cell "A" and size of cell "C" show that in all measurements, except dry weight, the mean differences are significant and that in all measurements there is an increase accompanying the increase in the size of brood cell. |