Abstract
The aim of this study was to examine whether the addition of a diluent for honey bee sperm, directly before insemination, affects the quality and vitality of queens and their brood, in comparison to queens inseminated traditionally, with fresh semen. Honey bee queens were inseminated with diluted and homogenized semen collected from a few dozen drones, in order to increase the diversity of their offspring. Queens and drones (Apis mellifera carnica) were mated within subspecies, however, only three selected lines were used. The average number of spermatozoa filling the spermatheca of queens, inseminated with semen without dilution, freshly collected from drones, from a single colony (SCS) was not significantly higher, compared to queens inseminated with semen diluted and mixed (MCS); amounting to 5.1 and 4.4 million sperm, respectively. Queens from both groups started laying eggs at a similar time after insemination, and their average life expectancy in colonies, was 20.5 and 22.6 months, respectively. The most common reason for queen losses was supersedure, and the reasons for these losses were not significantly different between groups. Brood survival rates, in both groups, did not differ significantly.
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