关键词: 蜜蜂, 免移虫, 蜂王浆生产, 蜂王培育

Abstract:

【Objective】 In the beekeeping industry, beekeepers need to conduct artificial larvae grafting either for royal jelly harvesting or for rearing queens artificially. Artificially grafting larvae requires beekeepers to have good eyesight and high proficiency. Especially with the increase of labor cost and the aging of beekeepers, artificially grafting larvae is a technical limitation that needs to be solved in the production of beekeeping. Under the support of the National Bee Industry Technology System for ten consecutive years, our team has been engaged in the research of non-grafting larvae technology. The objective of this study is to remove the limitation of artificially grafting larvae and to provide technical support for scientific beekeeping.【Method】Based on the biological characteristics of bees and the principle of bionics, a food-grade plastic worker comb foundation with regular holes was designed. The holes in the plastic worker comb foundation allow the assembly of larvae supporting devices or single queen cell bases. The idea was to assemble the hollow plastic worker comb foundation and the larvae supporting device or queen cell bases together to make a complete comb foundation firstly, and then to let the workers build the comb. Next, the queen is allowed to lay eggs in the cells of the comb. This is followed by removing the larvae supporting device or queen cell bases and assembling them into the queen cell bar with regular holes. In this way, royal jelly production or breeding queens can be achieved. This study tested the feasibility of the improved 10th generation of the non-grafting larvae technique of royal jelly harvesting and rearing queens, using the Italian bee (Apis mellifera ligustica) as the experimental system. Firstly, the number of combs in a colony which is about to swarm was reduced, and then the workers were allowed to build 10-12 pieces of combs based on the hollow plastic comb foundation, then the effect of royal jelly harvesting or rearing queens without larvae grafting was investigated. The experiment of royal jelly harvesting without artificially grafting larvae mainly measured the oviposition rate of one queen, two queens, multi-queen (four queens). The acceptance rate of newly assembled queen cells by nursing bees during royal jelly production was also measured. In the experiment of breeding queens without artificially grafting larvae, a single queen was allowed to lay eggs for 6 h. Then the birth weight and the number of ovarioles of the newly bred queens that developed from the eggs were measured. The methods of rearing queens without and with artificially grafting larvae were compared.【Result】Worker bees can build a complete comb based on the plastic hollow comb foundation, and the queen can lay eggs on the newly built comb. The oviposition rate of a single queen, double queens, multi-queen was 91.24%, 92.45% and 91.29%, respectively. The acceptance rate of newly assembled queen cells during royal jelly harvesting was 91.12%, 92.63% and 90.19%, respectively. There was no significant difference among them (P>0.05). The weight of the newly queens using the method of egg-based rearing queens without artificially grafting larvae and the method of grafting larvae based rearing queens was (256.31±3.75) mg and (243.43±2.05) mg, respectively. The number of ovarioles in unilateral ovary was (163.87±9.40) and (154.77±6.74), respectively. There was a significant difference between the two methods (P<0.05).【Conclusion】This study showed that the improved 10th generation of non-grafting larvae oviposition device can be used in royal jelly production and for rearing queens. It is worth popularizing and applying in the beekeeping industry.

Key words: honeybee, non-grafting larvae, royal jelly harvesting, queen rearing