Abstract
Twenty four morphological traits of Honeybees (Apis mellifera Linnaeus, 1758) were evaluated in 198 native colonies within Saudi Arabia to differentiate among populations. Principal component analysis based on colony means and k-means clustering proposed a separation of Saudi Honeybees into three clusters. These were confirmed by discriminant analysis, which reclassified colonies with 100% accuracy into clusters two and three and 96% accuracy into cluster one. Results indicate significant morphometric variation and a cline of factor one (characters associated with body size) from the north (cluster one) to the south (cluster three), with the highest dissimilarities between bees from the far north and the far south. The substantial variation detected in this study supported the previous description of Saudi Arabian Honeybees made by RUTTNER in 1976, which, based on few samples, was not representative of this large and diverse country.