Queen cells acceptance rate and royal jelly production in worker honey bees of two Apis mellifera races

Khan, Khalid Ali; Ghramh, Hamed A.; Ahmad, Zubair; El-Niweiri, Mogbel A. A.; Mohammed, Mohammed Elimam Ahamed

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0248593

Cited by 16 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…99 ± 2.22 mg/cell cup in hygienic bee colonies and, whereas 158.87 ± 2.52 mg/ cell cup in non-hygienic bee colonies. Previous literature indicated a lot of variations in RJ production, larval acceptance, and quality which affected my multiple factors including genetic variations, harvesting time, queen fecundity, and other environmental factor associated to weather condition and feeding conditions [ 21 , 33 , 38 , 48 – 50 ]. For instance, a previous literature reported that Africanized honeybees have a lot of variation, which opens up the possibility of selecting these honeybees for any production, such as honey, wax, pollen, propolis, or RJ, as happened with European honeybees selected to pollinate alfalfa cultures in the United States [ 51 , 52 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of queen cell acceptance and royal jelly production between hygienic and non-hygienic honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies

Khan

Ghramh

2022

PLoS ONE

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Honey bees are crucial for pollination services globally and produce important hive products including honey, royal jelly, pollen, and propolis that are being used commercially in food, cosmetics, and alternative medicinal purposes. Among the bee products, royal jelly (RJ) has long attracted scientists’ interest because of its importance in honey caste differentiation. The present research was carried out to determine the acceptance rate of queen cells, and RJ production between the hygienic and non-hygienic lines. Further, this study unveils the effect of pollen substitute diets on the queen cell acceptance rate and RJ yields between both bee stocks. Results showed that the uncapped brood cells and dead brood’s removal percentage was significantly more in hygienic bee colonies in comparison to non-hygienic bee colonies (p < 0.05). The average percentage of larval acceptance was statistically higher in hygienic lines (64.33 ± 2.91%) compared to non-hygienic lines (29.67 ± 1.20%). Similarly, the RJ mean weight per colony differed statistically between both bee stocks (p<0.001), which were 12.23 ± 0.52 g and 6.72 ± 0.33 g, respectively. Moreover, our results demonstrated that a significant difference was observed in larval acceptance rate, RJ yields (per colony and per cup) between both bee stocks those fed on various diets. However, no significant difference was recorded in RJ yields (per colony and per cup) between both bee stock that feeds on either commercially available pollen or pollen substitute. This study may provide future applications in helping bee breeders to choose the bees that carry a higher level of hygienic behavior with high RJ production traits.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of queen cell acceptance and royal jelly production between hygienic and non-hygienic honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies

Khan

Ghramh

2022

PLoS ONE

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“…UNC80 is essential in drosophila to promote circadian behavioral rhythm [86]. Our recent findings and previous behavioral facts suggest genes involved in caste differentiation, depression; facilitate pathways for neurotransmitters, integumentary system, storage proteins, brain development, sensory processing, and neurodegenerative disorder, which may cause impairment learning and reduce the learning performance in failed-learner bees [87][88][89][90].…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 57%

Differential gene expression analysis following olfactory learning in honeybee (Apis mellifera L.)

et al. 2022

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Insects change their stimulus-response through the perception of associating these stimuli with important survival events such as rewards, threats, and mates. Insects develop strong associations and relate them to their experiences through several behavioral procedures. Among the insects, Apis species, Apis mellifera ligustica are known for their outstanding ability to learn with tremendous economic importance. Apis mellifera ligustica has a strong cognitive ability and promising model species for investigating the neurobiological basis of remarkable olfactory learning abilities. Here we evaluated the olfactory learning ability of A. mellifera by using the proboscis extension reflex (PER) protocol. The brains of the learner and failed-learner bees were examined for comparative transcriptome analysis by RNA-Seq to explain the difference in the learning capacity. In this study, we used an appetitive olfactory learning paradigm in the same age of A. mellifera bees to examine the differential gene expression in the brain of the learner and failed-learner. Bees that respond in 2nd and 3rd trials or only responded to 3rd trials were defined as learned bees, failed-learner individuals were those bees that did not respond in all learning trials The results indicate that the learning ability of learner bees was significantly higher than failed-learner bees for 12 days. We obtained approximately 46.7 and 46.4 million clean reads from the learner bees failed-learner bees, respectively. Gene expression profile between learners’ bees and failed-learners bees identified 74 differentially expressed genes, 57 genes up-regulated in the brains of learners and 17 genes were down-regulated in the brains of the bees that fail to learn. The qRT-PCR validated the differently expressed genes. Transcriptome analyses revealed that specific genes in learner and failed-learner bees either down-regulated or up-regulated play a crucial role in brain development and learning behavior. Our finding suggests that down-regulated genes of the brain involved in the integumentary system, storage proteins, brain development, sensory processing, and neurodegenerative disorder may result in reduced olfactory discrimination and olfactory sensitivity in failed-learner bees. This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the olfactory learning behavior and gene expression information, which opens the door for understanding of the molecular mechanism of olfactory learning behavior in honeybees.

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“…It should be noted, however, that the RJ yield for the Africanized bees is much lower, i.e. ∼8 g per two-queen colony, as for other non-RJB races ( Khan et al, 2021 ; Ma et al, 2021 ). Moreover, although colonies with three or more RJB queens have been established by ablating queen mandibles to avoid queen fighting, they are not recommended for commercial RJ production due to special care required for their maintenance ( Zheng et al, 2009 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Effect of queen cell numbers on royal jelly production and quality

Ahmat

2022

Current Research in Food Science

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Queen cells acceptance rate and royal jelly production in worker honey bees of two Apis mellifera races

Cited by 16 publications

References 36 publications

Evaluation of queen cell acceptance and royal jelly production between hygienic and non-hygienic honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies

Evaluation of queen cell acceptance and royal jelly production between hygienic and non-hygienic honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies

Differential gene expression analysis following olfactory learning in honeybee (Apis mellifera L.)

Effect of queen cell numbers on royal jelly production and quality

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