Technology for the production of mature queen cells with a four day cycle

Abstract

For the complete breeding of queen bees with any method of their withdrawal, maternal and paternal families and queen-rearing colonies play a major role and close attention should be paid to them. This is especially true for the formation of queen-rearing colonies. In the periodic beekeeping literature, the technology with a 3- and 5-day cycle of giving larvae to queen-rearing colonies is widely covered. However, as our experiments have shown, the odd alternation of the day of larval production complicates the work, and especially with the mass withdrawal of queens. Instead of 3- and 5-day cycles of giving larvae to queen-rearing colonies, we propose the use of innovative technology for breeding queen bees with the formation of two groups of queen-rearing colonies with a 4-day cycle of setting larvae. The use of this technology allowed to increase the intake of larvae for uterine cultivation by 33,3 %. At the same time, the infertile queens bees that came out were larger, conditioned by live weight, corresponding to the upper limit of the physiological norm of the standard of Carpathian breed of bees – 193,0 mg (control was 187,0 mg), and the weight of mature queen cells was higher than the control value by 3,91 % or 756,9 mg (control was 727,3 mg). The yield of mature queen cells has been increased compared with the traditional 3-day cycle to 300–400 pcs from one queen-rearing colony. The created technology of breeding queen bees by the formation of queen-rearing colonies with complete orphanhood and modeling of the swarm state due to the crowding of bees, especially in wells at the place of feeding adopted larvae for upbringing, allows you to get highly conditioned by the main conformation and biomorphological characteristics of infertile queens of Carpathian breed.