Morphometric and behavioural characteristics of honeybees, Apis mellifera were analysed using multivariate and bivariate statistical methods to characterise honeybees of southern Ethiopian region. A total of 33800 morphometric character measurements were taken from 2600 individual worker honeybees of 130 honeybee colonies collected at 26 sampling localities with an average inter-locality distance of 89km to determine the occurrence of morphoclusters. 117 experienced farmer beekeepers and beekeeping experts were interviewed on pre-tested questionnaire to investigate the behavioural characteristics of these honeybees in their respective areas. Morphometric characters associated with pigmentation and body size exhibited a higher discriminant power while forewing venation angles (B4, N23 and 026) lack discriminatory power to segregate honeybees in the southern Ethiopian region. Principal components and discriminant analyses using the most discriminatory morphological characters delineated four statistically distinct morphoclusters in the southern Ethiopian region: the smallest and yellow honeybees, A. m. woyi-gambella which are different from all African honeybees, occur in the western and southern lowlands; the small and yellowiest honeybees, Apis mellifera jemenitica in the eastern escarpment; the largest and darkest honeybees, Apis mellifera bandasii in the central and eastern highlands; and dark honeybees, Apis mellifera scutellata in the wet tropical forests. High intracolonial and intercolonial variances within and between the boundaries of the honeybee groups were detected. The former suggests areas of ecological instability, while the latter areas of transitional or natural hybridisation zones. These areas are characterised by transitional ecological zones having intermediate climate and physiography. Even though honeybees of the southern Ethiopian region are generally dark and small, they show a high tendency to reproductive swarming, migration and aggressiveness, great variation in pigmentation, size and behaviour were observed both within and between the groups. A. m. jemenitica honeybees have a high propensity to migration and less a tendency for reproductive swarming. A. m. bandasii and A. m. scutellata have a high inclination to reproductive swarming and the former has a lesser and the later intermediate propensity to migration. A. m. woyi-gambella honeybees have intermediate swarming and migration tendencies. These results revealed that reproductive swarming and migration are higher in resource-rich and resource-poor areas respectively. Honey plants of the central highlands of Ethiopia are predominantly herbaceous in nature and mainly grow on open and cultivated lands. The bulk of pollen collected came comparatively from few genera. Strong correlation was observed between the intensities of flowering and rainfall. Reproductive swarming and migration occur during high and low intensity of flowering respectively.

The ideal climatic conditions and diversity of floral resources allow Ethiopia to sustain millions of honeybee colonies. Beekeeping is widely practiced and plays a significant role in the livelihood of the farming community of the country. Despite this, information on the types of geographical races of honeybees, their behavioural characters and the related ecological factors are not established. In this work an attempt was made to characterise the honeybee populations of the northern parts of Ethiopia based on the analyses of morphological, behavioural and ecological characteristics. For morphological analysis, 155 honeybee colony samples from 31 localities were collected. 20 worker honeybees per colony sample totalled 3100 individual worker honeybees and thirteen morphological characters per bee, a total of 40 300 measurements were recorded following Ruttner's (1988) protocols. The behavioural characters such as reproductive swarming, migration, temperament and colony seasonal cycles were assessed based on survey work of a pre-structured questionnaire. Various univariate and multivariate statistical methods were employed to analyse the data. The principal components and step-wise linear discriminant analyses revealed the existence of four discrete morphoclusters or geographical races: A. m. jemenitica from eastern, northwestern and northern arid and semi-arid lowlands, A. m. scutellata from the western humid midlands, A. m. bandasii from sub-moist central highlands and A. m. monticola from the northern mountainous parts of the study areas. These different geographical races were found to be distinctively distributed in the different ecological parts of the study area. High intercolonial and intracolonial variances were observed in all localities, however particularly high values were obtained in areas of transitions between ecological zones indicating a region of gene flow or zones of hybridisation among the statistically defined populations. Such high variances were observed mostly in areas where A. m. jemenitica borders the other geographical races. Moreover. distinct behavioural variations were also noted among these geographical races. Generally. the highland and mountainous honeybees A. m. bandasii and A. m. monticola are relatively larger in body size. have less tendency to swarm. less inclination to migrate and are relatively gentle while the converse traits were noted for the lowlands and midlands honeybees A. m. jemenitica and A. m. scutellata. Both morphological and behavioural variations were highly correlated with environmental factors and the variations seem to be the result of long adaptation to the interrelated ecological factors in their respective areas. Variations in reproductive swarming periods were also noted among these honeybee populations as a result of variations in rainfall pattern. altitude and temperature in their respective ecological areas which are believed to alter the honeybee colonies' seasonal cycles and leads to partial temporal reproductive isolation among these different honeybee populations.