Wing geometric-morphometric analysis to determine the population diversity of Iranian honey bee ( Apis mellifera meda) in Northwest of Iran.

The identification and study of diversity in honey bee populations is one of the most important goals in breeding of bees. This study is conducted to compare the morphological characteristics of the Iranian honeybee populations in areas of the North West and West of Iran using geometric morphometric. For this purpose, worker bees were sampled from 111 colonies belonging to the four provinces of East Azerbaijan, West Azerbaijan, Ardebil and Hamedan. The front wings of the bees were photographed in standard mode and to extract the wing shape data 19 landmarks were digitalized and defined by morphometric method on the two-dimensional images. Landmark data were analyzed after the Procrustes analysis by multivariate statistical methods of PCA, CVA CDA and cluster analysis. The obtained results showed that the bee populations present significant differences with respect to changes in climate and topography along the East Azerbaijan to the West Azerbaijan. Also the cluster analysis showed that the populations of Ardebil and Hamedan have the least and the populations of the West Azerbaijan and East Azerbaijan have the most difference in terms of their appearance.