Queen excluders enhance honey production in African honey bees, Apis mellifera, by limiting brood rearing during peak nectar flow

Journal Article

Radloff, Nuru Adgaba, Ahmed A Al-ghamdi, Mebrat Hailu, Awraris G Shenkute, Mohammed J Ansari, H Randall Hepburn and Sarah E . 2013

• المجلة \ الصحيفة: Journal of Apicultural Research
• رقم العدد: 5
• رقم الإصدار السنوي: 52
• الصفحات: 184 -189

مستخلص المنشور

The African and temperate European races of honey bees, Apis mellifera, differ significantly in the extent to which they invest their basic resources. The former group of bees exhibit adaptations geared toward brood rearing and subsequent reproductive swarming; while the latter, towards massive storage of resources (Hepburn and Radloff, 1998). It has been inferred that tropical bees are continuously selected to invest more in brood rearing to compensate for losses as a result of predator and climatic pressures (Seeley, 1985). Indeed, African races of A. mellifera can raise 50% more broods than European bees in hives of an identical volume over the same time period (Ruttner, 1988). Conversely, the same amount of honey that can be obtained in six weeks during a favourable summer in temperate regions may require six months in tropical Africa (Douhet, 1979; 1980), which also reflects fundamental differences in the utilisation of incoming resources.
In many tropical climates, the seasonal flowering phenology of bee plants and the brood-rearing cycles of bees are biphasic (Crane, 1990; Hepburn and Radloff, 1998). Therefore, the time intervals of forage scarcity periods are shortened, which may also affect the hoarding tendency of tropical bees. Moreover, in most of the Sahel, rainfall is meagre, and subsequent flowering periods are relatively short. In such environmental conditions, beekeepers cannot expect to benefit from high honey yields if the bees tend to utilise the resources available for continuous brood rearing. Under tropical conditions, during the honey harvest, it is a common phenomenon to observe an excess of brood compared to honey production, which is completely undesirable from a beekeeping perspective. Moreover, the bees are adapted to migrate and exploit the resources available in ecologically different habitats at different times (Chandler, 1976; Castagné, 1983; Hepburn and Radloff, 1995).