Apis Mellifera Jemenitica Quee

Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences xxx (2019) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences journal homepage: www.sciencedirect.com Original article The responses of Apis mellifera jemenitica to different artificial queen rearing techniques ⇑ Nuru Adgaba a, Ahmad Al-Ghamdi a, , Yilma Tadesse a, Ramzi Alsarhan a, Arif Single a, Seif Eldin Mohammed b, Khalid Ali Khan a a Bagshan Chair for Bee Research, Department of Plant Protection, College of Food and Agricultural Sciences, King Saud University, P.O. Box 2460, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia b National Center for Research, P.O. Box 6096, Khartoum, Sudan article info abstract Article history: In the current study, we investigated if any variations exist in acceptance rate of grafted larvae and qual- Received 18 February 2018 ity of queens reared in different queen cell cup sizes, between wet and dry grafting and between queen Revised 3 August 2018 right and queen less conditions of A. m. jemenitica colonies. The acceptance rate of grafted larvae in dif- Accepted 31 August 2018 ferent queen cell cup sizes (7.0 mm, 7.5 mm, 8.0 mm, 8.5 mm) were varying from 69 to 71% and the vari- Available online xxxx ations were not significant among the different queen cups sizes but averagely lower than the acceptances recorded for other races. Out of the 172 dry grafted larvae, only 56.4% of them were accepted Keywords: while in wet grafting out of 174 grafted larvae 77.01% were accepted. Regarding the rate of sealing, Queen rearing 48.84% and 71.84% of them sealed for dry and wet grafts, respectively. The observed variation in the rate A. m.jemenitica Wet grafting of acceptance and sealing were significant (N = 346, df = 1, P < 0.0001) between the two techniques. Dry grafting However, there was no significant difference in fresh weight of emerged queens between the two grafting Queen cups methods. Out of the 324 grafted larvae given to queen right and queen less starter colonies each; 106 Queen right (32.72%) and 252 (73.68%) were accepted in queen right and queen less starter colonies, respectively Queenless and the variation was highly significant at P < 0.0001. The total number of sealed pupae were 82 (25.31%) and 216 (63.16%) for queen right and queen less colonies, respectively and the variations was significant at P < 0.0001. From the study it can be concluded that A. m. jemenitica colonies can rear significantly more queens under wet grafting and in queen less colonies conditions than dry grafting and queen right conditions Ó 2018 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). 1. Introduction Moreover, many desirable traits of a colony like gentleness and dis- ease resistance are governed by the nature of the queen (Morse, Artificial honey bee queen rearing is one of the indispensable 1979; Ratnieks and Nowogrodzki, 1988) which generally indicates parts of beekeeping to regularly re-queen colonies, to minimize the importance of artificial queen rearing. swarming tendency, to enhance brood and honey production, to Indeed, over many decades’ different queen rearing techniques increase colony number and to improve their genetic characteris- have been developed to rear many queens from a single colony tics (Morse, 1979, 1994; Crane, 1990; Laidlaw and Page, 1997). (Johansson and Johansson, 1973; Morse, 1979; Harry and Honey bee queen is an important part of a colony because it is Laidlaw, 1981; Ruttner, 1983). However, the studies were limited one of the most important factors that determine the productiv- to certain races and mostly under temperate climatic regions. ity’s of a colony (Laidlaw, 1979; Morse, 1979; Ruttner, 1983). The responses of colonies towards different queen rearing techniques are greatly varying from ecology to ecology and race to race of honey bees. The presence of response variations towards differ- ⇑ Corresponding author. ent queen rearing techniques due to the differences in environ- E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Al-Ghamdi). mental, behavioral and biological factors have been well reported Peer review under responsibility of King Saud University. (Morse, 1994; Nuru and Dereje, 1999; Nuru, 2012; Crailsheim et al., 2013). Moreover, climatic conditions like temperature, relative humidity and pollen source plants are known as important Production and hosting by Elsevier factors in determining the acceptance and quality of artificially https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sjbs.2018.08.028 1319-562X/Ó 2018 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Please cite this article in press as: Adgaba, N., et al. The responses of Apis mellifera jemenitica to different artificial queen rearing techniques. Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences (2019), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sjbs.2018.08.028 2 N. Adgaba et al. / Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences xxx (2019) xxx–xxx reared queens (Zhadanova, 1967; Koç and Karacaog˘lu, 2004; 2.2. The effect of different queen cell cup sizes on the acceptance rate of Cengiz et al., 2009). In this regard, the great influences of environ- grafted larvae mental factors and the presence of response variations among different queen rearing techniques were well reported (Wen-Cheng Since A. m. jemenitica is reported as the smallest honey bee race and Chong-Yuan, 1985; Morse, 1994; Dodologlu et al., 2004; in the Apis mellifera species, it was important to determine the suit- Cengiz et al., 2009; Crailsheim et al., 2013). able size of artificial queen cell cups diameter for the race. To deter- In addition, Wilkinson and Brown (2002) reported the presence mine the suitable diameter of the artificial queen cups of the race, of significant variations in length of queen cells reared by queen first, the natural queen cups diameter of the race was determined less and queen right colonies and they suggested the importance through measuring the diameters of naturally built queen cells. of further investigations to determine if there is variation among For this purpose, 60 fully built natural queen cells were obtained races of Apis mellifera in their ability or inclination to rear queens from six different colonies. The natural queen cells were carefully in queen right and queen less colony conditions. Moreover, cut with sharp blade at height of 6–8 mm from the base then the Büchler et al. (2013) reported that, the acceptance rate of grafted diameters of the cups at rim were measured and recorded. The nat- larvae is highly affected by the presence or absence of queens ural diameter of the queen cups of the race was varying from and methods of rearing. 6.34 mm to 8.91 mm with mean of 7.72 mm (N = 60). Then, the data Moreover, Skowronek and Skubida, (1988) showed that grafting were categorized into three groups (small, medium and large sizes) was more successful in queen cups diameter of 7.8–9.0 mm than in with nearly equal frequencies. According to the categorized data, larger cups (10–12 mm) for Apis mellifera. The presence of accep- the average diameters of small, medium and large queen cell cups tance variations towards different artificial queen cups cells size groups were 7.0 mm, 7.5 mm and 8.0 mm, respectively. The dimensions has been reported for Apis cerana (Abrol et al., 2005). average natural queen cell cups diameter of each category was This may indicate the importance of determining if any variations taken as bases for production of artificial queen cell cups. exist in acceptance rate of larvae grafted in different queen cup Then wooden dipping sticks with three different sizes that cells sizes. match with each queen cell cups diameter category were carefully Grafting with different approaches such as wet or dry grafting prepared and used to produce artificial queen cell cups of each cat- were tested by different researchers (Ratnieks and Nowogrodzki, egory. Along with the three cup diameter categories, the standard 1988; El-Din, 1999; Büchler et al., 2013) and reported the high rate queen cell cup size (with diameter of 8.5 mm), which is widely of acceptance and queen emergence using royal jelly as grafting sub- used for commercial queen rearing purpose was also included as strate. Moreover, significantly higher morphological values were control and comparisons. Sufficient numbers of queen cell cups also recorded for queens reared from wet than dry grafting method of each category were produced using pure beeswax. So, four dif- (Kamel et al., 2013). However, Wilkinson and Brown (2002); ferent queen cell cup diameter categories (7.0 mm, 7.5 mm, Cushman (2013) reported a good acceptance rate from dry grafting. 8.0 mm and 8.5 mm) were used to test if any variations exist in Under Saudi Arabia conditions where temperature is high and the acceptance rate of grafted larvae among the different queen cell relative humidity is very low, wet grafting may contribute for better cup sizes. The testing was made on 12 colonies (4 colonies per acceptance of larvae which required to be investigated. batch) in three batches. For each colony 36 queen cups (9 cups Grafting methods with queen less or queen right colonies were from each size category) were given. The 36 cups (12 cups/bar) also tested and different performances were recorded for different were fixed on three wood bars that hanged on standard Langstroth queen quality parameters (Laidlaw, 1979; Laidlaw and Page, 1997; frames.

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