Abstract
To have the required colony population, feeding the colony is very crucial when there is a shortage of bee flora in the environment. The aim of this study is, therefore, to test the effect of pollen supplementary feeding during dearth period (2015/16 to 2016/17) at apiary site of Haro Sabu Agricultural Research Center of Kellem Wollega Zone, Western Ethiopia. Three treatments namely: Chick pea ( Cicer arietinum ), Mung bean ( Vigna radiata ) and Soybean ( Glycine max ) each with four replication by Completely Randomized Design was used. From the result, all the fed types consumed by the bee colonies and they were more consumed during dry season than rainy. Statistically, there was no significant difference (p>0.05) observed between the given fed group. From the internal data recorded, the colonies which fed different supplementary pulse flour invests more than the unfed group. Therefore, it can be concluded that, giving pollen supplementary feeding at the time of dearth period maintains the strength of bee colony within the hive and attain to the next natural pollen and nectar flow season. Keywords : Chick pea, Colonies, Mung bean, Pollen, Soya bean, DOI : 10.7176/JBAH/9-9-01 Publication date :May 31 st 2019
Highlights
A colony population of at least 450,000-50,000 adult bees and 36,000-45,000 developing bees in the brood cycle are required to produce economically excess honey (Al-Ghamdi, 2002)
Mung bean found more preferred by a colony with a mean of 208.722 gram per colony while Soya bean was the less consumed with a mean of 191.406 gram per colony during dry season (Figure 1)
The present study showed that bee colonies utilized more of the given feed type at the period of dry season than rainy season of the study area
Summary
A colony population of at least 450,000-50,000 adult bees and 36,000-45,000 developing bees in the brood cycle are required to produce economically excess honey (Al-Ghamdi, 2002). Pollen grains are the male germs of flowers and major source of protein to honeybee colonies (Buchmann and Orourke, 2011), and used to feed developing larvae and young bees to provide structural elements of muscles and glands. It is used in the production of royal jelly, which is a specialty food produced by nurse bees and fed to the queen, developing queen larvae, and worker larvae up to 72 hours of age (Alqarni 2006). These substitutes constitute a wide range of components such as soybean based products (Kulincevic et al, 1982), yeast micelle and in a lot of cases powder milk (Zaytoon et al, 1988; Ranna et al, 1996)
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