Comparing Alternative Methods for Holding Virgin Honey Bee Queens for One Week in Mailing Cages before Mating

Abstract

In beekeeping, queen honey bees are often temporarily kept alive in cages. We determined the survival of newly-emerged virgin honey bee queens every day for seven days in an experiment that simultaneously investigated three factors: queen cage type (wooden three-hole or plastic), attendant workers (present or absent) and food type (sugar candy, honey, or both). Ten queens were tested in each of the 12 combinations. Queens were reared using standard beekeeping methods (Doolittle/grafting) and emerged from their cells into vials held in an incubator at 34C. All 12 combinations gave high survival (90 or 100%) for three days but only one method (wooden cage, with attendants, honey) gave 100% survival to day seven. Factors affecting queen survival were analysed. Across all combinations, attendant bees significantly increased survival (18% vs. 53%, p<0.001). In addition, there was an interaction between food type and cage type (p<0.001) with the honey and plastic cage combination giving reduced survival. An additional group of queens was reared and held for seven days using the best method, and then directly introduced using smoke into queenless nucleus colonies that had been dequeened five days previously. Acceptance was high (80%, 8/10) showing that this combination is also suitable for preparing queens for introduction into colonies. Having a simple method for keeping newly-emerged virgin queens alive in cages for one week and acceptable for introduction into queenless colonies will be useful in honey bee breeding. In particular, it facilitates the screening of many queens for genetic or phenotypic characteristics when only a small proportion meets the desired criteria. These can then be introduced into queenless hives for natural mating or insemination, both of which take place when queens are one week old.

Effect of Queens Density, Cage Level and Position of Honeybee Mated Queens Stored for Different Periods in Queen-Right Bank Colonies on Their Supersedure Rate

“…These results are in agreement with Rangel et al, (2013) who revealed that 25.0% of high quality queens were superseded after 82 days of introduction. Bigio, et al, (2012) had the same trend and reported that storing virgin queens for 7 days resulted in 80% acceptance in queenless nucleus hives. Hendriksma, et al, (2004) revealed that about 20% of normal queens are superseded in the overwintering colonies, Meanwhile in 2003 Gencer found that 11.2% of stored queens in queenless colonies were superseded after five months of storage, and did not differ significantly from the control ones.…”

Factors impacting survival of mature honey bee drones kept in small laboratory cages

“…Accordingly, the survival of caged bee queens was promoted when honey candy was used for feeding (Abou-Shaara, Elbanoby 2017). In contrast, honey only was better than sugar candy alone or mixed with honey in promoting survival of caged queens (Bigio et al 2012), perhaps since the liquid feeding was more easily utilized by caged bees. Drones without attendant workers were able to survive only up to 96 h (4 days) while with attendant workers up to 192 h (8 days).…”

Effect of Virgin Queens Storage on Their Survival Rate, Attractiveness and Acceptance by the Honey Bee Colonies

“…Mean survival rate was influenced negatively with storage period, which was in agreement with Mohamed et al, (2002), where they reported that only 66.7% of virgin queens survived after 3 weeks of storage in queenless colonies. Bigio et al, (2012) reported that storing queens for 3 days resulted in 90 to 100% survival. The decline in EC may be due to the workers aggressiveness towards introduced queens and sting them through the two screen sides causing death, while in case of BC the queens can escape far towards the wooden side avoiding the sting apparatus.…”