Monitoring the reproductive individuals in the oriental hornet Vespa orientalis.

Individuals of the oriental hornet, Vespa orien-talis Fab. were monitored at the apiary of Faculty of Agriculture .Ain Shams University throughout the year of 2006. The individual which was first detected in early spring at the first week of Febru-ary was the mated queens, later during the last week of April workers were appeared. At the first week of September individuals large in size ap-peared which were workers with developed ovary and not a new queen as believed previously. New queens started to appear at the second week of November after about three weeks from appear-ance the drones which appear at the last week of October. The numbers of ovarioles varied from 7 to 8 for each ovary in queens either in spring or in autumn. On the other hand the numbers of ovari-oles were only 7 for each ovary in workers either normal or with developed ovary. The measure-ments of the spermatheca showed no significant differences between all female individuals. The average numbers of spermatozoa in the queen's spermatheca of spring queen hornet were 1.486± 0.370 million spermatozoa and in the new queens who appear in the end of the year, the numbers of spermatozoa recorded 1.343±0.332 million. The counts of spermatozoa in the seminal vesicles of drone hornet recorded 2.336 ± 0.408 million sperms per drone.