EXPRESSION OF ALPHA-GLUCOSIDASE GENE IN HYPOPHARYNGEAL GLANDS OF EASTERN HONEYBEE WORKER Apis cerana indica

Duties of worker bees in a hive change according to their age. Temporal and spatial expres-sion of developmentally regulated genes relating to this is interesting. In order to control the age of Apis cerana indica, emerged bees were marked with painting color and counted as 0 day. Bees at desired ages were collected during 0-29 days with the time interval of 3 days. The re-sults showed that hypopharyngeal glands (hpg) change their size from large to shrunken and their colour from creamy to pale. The largest acini were found in worker bees 15 to 18 days old and the smallest in 29 days old. Alpha-glucosidase (ag) activity assay in crude extract was low in emerged bees. Then, the activity increased in workers 18 days old and got the highest in those 24 days old. Activity staining of crude extract by native polyacrylamide gel, ag was low from 18-day and high from 29-day old worker bees. In addition, the expression profile of ag was ob-tained by RT-PCR. It indicates that the expression of ag was high in foragers. The obtained cDNA sequence shows closely relationship (82.81 % similarity) to the cDNA in A. mellifera