Impact of Confinement and Population Size on the Instrumentally Inseminated Queen’s Performance of Apis cerana Species in South Korea

Abstract

251Instrumental insemination of honey bee is an attractive alternative to natural mating in breeding program as it allows mating crosses between desirable queen and specific drone. However, nursery condition that the queen is kept before and after insemination is major factor affected to the performance of instrumentally inseminated queen. In this study, we evaluated the influences of three different nursery-conditions of push-in cages, mini nuclei and normal colonies on number of spermatozoa stored in the spermatheca, body weight, onset of ovipositon and performance of instrumentally inseminated Apis cerana queen. Our results demonstrated that instrumentally inseminated queens kept in mini nuclei and in normal hives showed no significant difference in queen's weight (159.8 and 166.2mg, respectively), number of spermatozoa in spermatheca (2.02 10 6 and 2.76 10 6 , respectively), proportion of queen supersedure (33.3 and 66.7% queen survival at 11 months after oviposition, respectively) and brood production, compared to naturally mated queens. In contrast, instrumentally inseminated queens kept in push-in cages showed significant difference of those above data in comparison to queens mated naturally. Our results suggested that instrumentally inseminated queens could be kept in mini nuclei containing about 1.000 attendant bees to have desirable performance of queen whereas the push-in method should be practiced for the purpose of using queen in the length of time less than 7 months. Apiculture 33(4) : 251~260 (2018) Abstract Journal of