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Stimulating natural supersedure of honeybee queens, Apis mellifera
Abstract
When a honeybee queen starts to fail, she is often superseded by a young queen that takes over reproduction inside the colony. Natural supersedure in winter leads to an unfertilised young queen and colony loss. To reduce these losses we tried to stimulate supersedure of queens earlier in the season. In 50 colonies we introduced queen cells with one-day-old larvae and capped queen cells. Although many larvae were fed initially, few of them were reared to mature queens and none of the cases resulted in supersedure. This suggests that supersedure cannot be evoked by artificially bypassing the initial phases of the process.
... Similar results were reported in other studies (Poole et al., 1973;Levinsohn andLensky, 1981 andWyborn et al., 1993). Hendriksma, et al., (2004) ...
... Bigio et al. (2012) had the same trend and reported that storing virgin queens for 7 days resulted in 80% acceptance in queenless nucleus hives. Hendriksma, et al. (2004) revealed that about 20% of normal queens are superseded in the overwintering colonies, Meanwhile in 2003 Gencer found that 11.2% of stored queens in queenless colonies were superseded after five months of storage, and did not differ significantly from the control ones. Similar results were reported in other studies (Poole et al., 1973;Levinsohn andLensky, 1981 andWyborn et al., 1993). ...
This work was carried out at the apiary of the Agricultural Experimental
Station, Faculty of Agriculture, Cairo University, Giza Governorate.
Part I. Storing of honeybee mated queens for long period
This study aimed to investigate some factors affecting stored mated honeybee
queens weight and survival rate as well as post storage performance of these queens
after 75 days of storage within queen-right colonies. Storing queens in numbers of 20,
30 and 40 had no significant effect on their weight. Mean weight of queen stored in
excluder cages (EC) was significantly higher than those stored in screen mesh ones
(SC). The mean weight of stored queens in the upper strip was higher than the mean of
the lower one. Queens stored in peripheral and middle of holding frame did not differ
significantly from each other. Concerning queens survival rate, the mean survival rate
of 20 stored mated queens was the superior rank, while the survival rate of 30 and 40
stored mated queens came next with no significant differences between them. Queens
stored in SC had more significant survival rate than those stored in EC. The upper strip
had a higher survival rate than the lower one. Queens stored in the middle of holding
frame showed significantly higher survival rate than those in the peripheral. Regarding
post storage performance, no significant differences were detected between the brood
areas produced by queens stored for 45 or 75 days in the 3 densities. Queens stored for
45 days and those in the upper level had a significantly higher brood production than
those stored for 75 days and those stored in the lower level. Queens stored for 45 and 75
days had no significant differences in supersedure percentages either stored in the 3
densities, in 2 levels or in the 2 positions.
Part II. Storing of honeybee virgin queens
This work aimed to investigate the effect of colony and storage cage type on
queens survival rate, orphan period on attracted workers as well as storage period and
colony strength on queens attractiveness and acceptance. Queens stored in Benton cages
(BC) had a higher insignificant survival rate than those stored in emerging ones (EMC).
Storing queens in queenless colonies resulted in more significant survival rate than
those stored in queenright ones. Increasing the colonies orphan period attracted more
significant workers to old queens. This attractiveness increased significantly with the
increase of queen age from 3 to 30 days old. The younger and older virgin queens were
significantly more accepted than the intermediate ones. The average number of attracted
workers in nuclei was significantly greater than those recorded in strong colonies and so
as the acceptance percentages.
... Other factors do contribute to losses, including poor nutrition (Naug 2009, Vaudo et al. 2015, Dolezal and Toth 2018, erratic seasonality, and other environmental factors (Goulson et al. 2015, Vaudo et al. 2015, Overturf et al. 2022. Colony survival can be impacted by queen health, which is likely one of the triggers for supersedure when a queen is replaced by her colony, which is also an energetically costly and risky behavior (Hendriksma et al. 2004, vanEngelsdorp et al. 2013Tarpy 2016, Holmes et al. 2023). These losses can directly impact beekeepers through reduced productivity, lost opportunities for packaged bees or nuc sales, or increased costs of maintenance, all factors that become evident when considering effective profit from honey sales (Fei et al. 2021, Khalifa et al. 2021, Bixby et al. 2023. ...
Honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) are the premier agricultural pollinators with direct ecological value and are key to some agro-economies. Major factors have negatively impacted honey bee health in the past 2 decades with Varroa (Varroa destructor Anderson and Trueman) infestation rising as a principal predictor of colony mortality. A key strategy deployed in Varroa management is breeding for resistant honey bee populations that can maintain comparable levels of productivity as nonresistant populations. In this study, we examine one such population, Hilo honey bees, within the context of a common garden contrast with a commercial population in a stationary honey production operation. We compare colony survival, health, yield, and profit outcomes to show how this specific breeding population retains a profit value in honey production operations while maintaining higher survival and lower Varroa infestation levels than the commercial population. This information can be used by commercial beekeepers to make best management practice decisions and inspire further work examining what trade-offs, if any, are present in this Varroa-resistant population.
... Bigio, et al., (2012) had the same trend and reported that storing virgin queens for 7 days resulted in 80% acceptance in queenless nucleus hives. Hendriksma, et al., (2004) revealed that about 20% of normal queens are superseded in the overwintering colonies, Meanwhile in 2003 Gencer found that 11.2% of stored queens in queenless colonies were superseded after five months of storage, and did not differ significantly from the control ones. Similar results were reported in other studies (Poole et al., 1973;Levinsohn andLensky, 1981 andWyborn et al., 1993). ...
A study was carried out to investigate the influence of differently aged wax combs (foundation as zero, 1, 2, 3 and
4�6 years old) on some biological aspects that affect the productivity of honey bee colonies. Twenty-five package colonies
were equally divided and situated on each of the tested combs during the spring of two successive years (2018 and
2019). The obtained results revealed that worker brood areas, worker population, worker life span, weights of newly
emerged workers and drones, and honey yield significantly increased with fresh combs. However, drone brood areas
increased with old combs, and wax combs age had no effect on worker survivorship. It could be concluded that the
wax combs aged from zero (foundation) to three years old (light color combs) are more preferable in the performance
and productivity of honey bee colonies than the older (dark color combs) ones.
Keywords: wax comb age; honey bee colony; worker and drone brood; worker life span; honey production; weight
of emerged workers and drones
The growing gap between new evidence of pesticide toxicity in honeybees and conventional toxicological assays recommended by regulatory test guidelines emphasizes the need to complement current lethal endpoints with sublethal endpoints. In this context, behavioral and reproductive performances have received growing interest since the 2000s, likely due to their ecological relevance and/or the emergence of new technologies. We review the biological interests and methodological measurements of these predominantly studied endpoints and discuss their possible use in the pesticide risk assessment procedure based on their standardization level, simplicity and ecological relevance. It appears that homing flights and reproduction have great potential for pesticide risk assessment, mainly due to their ecological relevance. If exploratory research studies in ecotoxicology have paved the way toward a better understanding of pesticide toxicity in honeybees, the next objective will then be to translate the most relevant behavioral and reproductive endpoints into regulatory test methods. This will require more comparative studies and improving their ecological relevance. This latter goal may be facilitated by the use of population dynamics models for scaling up the consequences of adverse behavioral and reproductive effects from individuals to colonies.
In two experiments with queenright honey-producing colonies, 17% (46 of 276) and 31% (9 of 29) of the old queens were replaced by queens emerging from queen cells introduced with little or no isolation from the original queen. Few old queens were replaced by young virgin queens introduced to colonies with either smoke or vanilla-honey-water sprays.
When ripe queen cells (9–10 days after grafting) were placed into queenright colonies, only 15% (0–39%) of the resident queens were replaced by a new queen. New queens reared in the queenless half of a temporarily divided colony replaced 50% of the resident queens when the colonies were re-united. Of the queenless control colonies, 90% were successfully requeened by the queen cell method.
Queen cells placed in the brood rearing area of queenright Apis mellifera L. colonies are destroyed by worker bees in response to holes cut in the cells by queens. Normal queen cells, cells with occupants removed, cells with workers or drones substituted, and artificial pieces of wax made to resemble cells were destroyed. Queen cells with older queen pupae were destroyed more frequently than recently capped cells. Queen cells with holes were consistently repaired in colonies with caged queens, except when holes were large or high in position. Queen cells with holes were rapidly destroyed in queenright colonies.
The effects of various dosages of queen mandibular pheromone on the inhibition of queen rearing in queenless honey bee colonies was investigated. Dosages ranged from 10−3 to 10 queen equivalents (Qeq) per day; one Qeq was the amount of pheromone in an average pair of queen mandibular glands. Both temporal and dose-dependent effects were found. The higher doses were effective at preventing queen rearing early in the experiment (days 0-6), but by day 10, when queen rearing was effectively completed, there were few effects at any dose. Approximately 1 Qeq/d was sufficient to suppress queen rearing for up to 6 d in colonies of 8,000-10,000 workers. Results indicate that the active components of queens' mandibular glands exhibit dose-dependent effects on queen rearing, but there are additional requirements necessary for the suppression of queen rearing for periods longer than 6 d. The amount of pheromone secreted by queens and distributed by workers may be considerably greater than previously considered.
ISBN 3-331-00640-8 Forster, I.W. 1972 Requeening honeybee colonies without dequeening
- Deutcher
- Berlin
Deutcher Landwirtschaftsverlag Berlin GmbH. ISBN 3-331-00640-8 Forster, I.W. 1972. Requeening honeybee colonies without dequeening. N.Z.Jl agric. Res. 15(2): 413-419