Hygienic behaviour in the Australian stingless bees Tetragonula carbonaria and T. hockingsi

Hygienic behaviour is a natural mechanism of colony-level disease resistance to brood pathogens and has been reported in honey bees and stingless bees. A novel brood disease was recently confirmed in the Australian stingless bees Tetragonula carbonaria Smith and Tetragonula hockingsi Cockerell and there is a paucity of data available on hygienic behaviour in these species. To address this, we investigated hygienic behaviour in eight colonies of T. carbonaria and four colonies of T. hockingsi, using brood freeze-kill and pin-kill assays. Hygienic behaviour was present in both species and was rapidly expressed in both assays. In T. carbonaria, the mean time (+/- SE) for removal of freeze-killed and pin-killed brood was 9.1 +/- 1.9 hours and 8.2 +/- 0.9 hours, respectively (n = 8; one trial per assay). In T. hockingsi, removal of freeze-killed and pin-killed brood was 14.1 +/- 5.1 hours and 10.4 (no SE) hours, respectively. There was no significant difference (alpha = 0.05) in time taken to complete the hygienic behaviour phases (detection, uncapping, removal or cell dismantling) between assay type or assay order in both species. However, intercolony variation was observed in both species in the assays, suggesting that like honey bees, hygienic behaviour may have a genetic component. Tetragonula carbonaria and T. hockingsi displayed significantly faster detection, uncapping, removal and cell dismantling times than any of the stingless bees or most honey bees studied previously. This may, in part, explain why stingless bees appear to suffer from relatively few brood diseases.