Demonstration and Participatory Evaluation of Different Honey Bee Queen Rearing Techniques at Ramada Station of Shebedino Woreda, Sidama Zone, SNNPR, Ethiopia

Abstract

The objectives of this study was to determent the type of queen rearing technique which was more appropriate to local conditions, productive, simple and practice. To conduct the study Strong and uniform colony population was selected and bought from beekeepers. Then after bee colonies were transferred to Kenya top bar hives /KTBH/ and Zander model and allowed establishing by keeping under favourable management conditions. Three types of colony multiplication were practiced to identify the best suitable technique for the study area for both in farmers and research centres practice. The techniques were practiced on the two annual potential season of the area. The trial period was September and November on which ample of flowers exists and the second season was May to June. On both seasons the colonies were supplied with sugar syrup feeding. The splitting, overcrowding and miller methods were practiced on zander and KTBH under a similar feeding and management environment. Since the underlying concept of queen rearing is to get the most number of queens from the least resources from the genetics chosen traits the keeper wants, at the trial period 6 to 5 queen larvae’s were obtained from splitting techniques, 3 to 2 cells from overcrowding and 2 to 0 queens from miller techniques per hive were obtained. According to this study, although there is an annual seasons effect on honeybee queen rearing and no significance difference between the techniques, the study shows that the splitting method (either pre-arranged or random) could be used to be better stimulate worker bees in a queen less colony to rear their own queen and evaluated based on its efficiency, easiness, time saving, practicality, strength, and productivity and of the multiplied colony. Therefore, it is better for institutions to establishment bee centers committed for research and bee breeding and extension should target on capacity building on splitting queen rearing programs.