A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON THE QUALITY OF HONEY BEE (Apis mellifera) QUEENS DEVELOPED FROM LARVAE AFTER THE COLLECTION OF ROYAL JELLY

Abstract

Rearing bee queens is almost done utilizing grafting young larvae while the effects of grafting using old larvae after the collection of royal jelly on the quality of queens are not known. In fact, the production of royal jelly depends on grafting, then discarding the larvae to collect the royal jelly. This study aimed to investigate this point by grafting old larvae after removing them from their original cells without food. Larvae at age about 2 days were grafted into plastic queen cell cups (selection and grafting method or S&G method) leaving royal jelly behind and then resultant queens were compared with naturally reared ones (or NQ). The study showed the absence of significant variations between the queens reared from the two methods in characteristics of queens and cells. Meanwhile, no significant differences were found in regard to the performance of colonies. The colonies with queens from S&G method had slightly higher performance than those with NQ. The study concluded that grafting using old larvae without their original food does not impair the quality of queens. During the production of royal jelly, larvae may be grafted into new cells to continue their normal development instead of discarding them.