Bal Arısı (Apis mellifera) Ana Arılarının Ege Bölgesi Koşullarında Farklı Yöntemlerle Kışlatılması

Abstract

This study was conducted between 2012-2014 years in Aydın province to compare the success of individual and mass storage of mated honey bee queens (Apis mellifera) under the winter conditions of Aegean region. The queens reared from Italian (It) and Aegean ecotype of Anatolian (AE) honey bee races in 2 consecutive years were overwintered en masse in reservoir colonies and individually in colonies held in Kirchain mating boxes and 5-frame nucleus hives (control group). In the first year, both queenright reservoir (QRR) and queenless reservoir (QLR) colonies were prepared from both naturally mated It and AE queens for mass storage, whereas only queenless reservoir (QLR) colonies from both races were used in the second year. A total of 112 mated queens were stored both in 4 QRR and 4 QLR in the first year, whereas a total of 56 mated queens were stored only in 4 QLR in the second year. In both years, 10 It and 10 AE queens were individually overwintered in 20 mating boxes. At the end of about 3-month overwintering period in both years, queen survival (%) was determined in all experimental groups. In order to test whether mass storage affected the reproductive performance of queens, 30 queens overwintered in the first year in reservoir colonies (10 queens), mating boxes (10 queens) and nucleus hives (10 queens) were introduced into test colonies. The queen survival (%) was not affected by both the race of reservoir colony (P>0.05) and of the queen overwintered (P>0.05). But, the type of reservoir colony affected queen survival (P<0.01). In the first year, 64.3% of queens stored in QLR colonies survived for 3 months, whereas 17.9% of queens survived in QRR colonies (P<0.01). In both years, the queen survivals in reservoir colonies (64.3% and 71.5% in QLR colonies) were lower than those in colonies held in mating boxes (100% and 100%; P<0.01). The reproductive performances of queens stored in reservoir colonies were not found different from those of individually overwintered queens in test colonies (P>0.05).