Small Hive Beetle - Honours Zoology
Paul Akkermans 5 May 2021After 3 years of studying Zoology at the University of Pretoria (UP), I decided to continue my university career at the Social Insect Research Group (SIRG) at UP. The study group is part of the Department of Zoology and Entomology and is one of the leading research groups for bee research. During my Honours years I worked on Small Hive Beetle (Aethina Tumida) one of the major bee parasites in addition to the Varroa mite (Varroa destructor).
During the first year of my Honours career I was basically struggling with rearing the SHBs. The second year I was able to rear beetles very efficiently to accomodate for my research to investigate the hiding behaviour of SHB. During my study I learned that male and female beetles do not differ interms of hiding behaviour. Furthermore, bodyweight did not influence hiding behaviour of the beetles. What was most noticiable of the movement patterns of the beetles was that they spend significant more time hiding in the artifical shelter compared to running around and feeding. I concluded that this was due to their behavioural adaptation to living among "aggressive" bees in the hives. Moving in th open would be destructive towards survival.
Rearing of the beetles was such an success that I was also able to help out a fellow researcher from Wageningen University & Research (WUR) out with his research about the effect of tempature on pupation. This research was later published in the journal of Global Change Biology.
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