Effects Of Minerals And Vitamins On Winter Honey Bee(Apis Mellifera L.)

In the north of China, owing to low temperature and no sources of nectar, the honey beescan’t get food in winter. Under natural conditions, honey is the only food in winter, but sugaris the most use of feeds in the north of China. On the current situation, the research ofhoneybee nutrition is week; moreover, there is a leak of honeybee feeding standardThus thereare important meanings of the research on honeybee overwintering requirements of mineralsand vitamins, important for framing honeybee feeding standard and the confect of honeybeefeed.In this study, honeybees (Apis mellifera) ware feed on fed with mineral elements andvitamins of different types and different levels before winter. In order to investigate suitablesupply level of mineral elements and vitamins in the winter feed of honeybees, we detectedthe winter loss rate, feed consumption, the changes of population of bee colony after winterand the antioxidant capacity of bees. We also try to research the affect of the importantmineral elements and vitamins to antioxidant capacity of honeybee larva in the indoorartificial breeding conditions.The Experiment One is the affect of the white sugar syrup added with minerals andvitamins to the winter performance of honeybees.40groups of honeybee with the samevariety and same population were were randomly divided into8groups in late fall. One groupwas fed syrup of white sugar as the basal diet group; One group was fed vitex honey, as acontrol group; the remaining6groups for the test group. In accordance with the uniformdesign experiment arranged in accordance with the U6*(62). The content of mineral elementsand vitamins of vitex honey was taken as the base value. Mineral elements and vitamins in6levels (0%,30%,60%,90%,120%,150%of the base value) were added to the basal diet. Thehoneybees in all groups were intensively fed in late fall and the population and the feedingamount were recorded. Feed consumption, loss of bees in the winter, body antioxidantcapacity and the population changes after winter were determined after winter. The resultsshow:(1) The addition of different levels of elements and vitamins to the basal diet had nosignificant effect on the winter loss and the feed consumption.(2) Different levels of mineralelements and vitamins added to the basal diet had important effect on the growth of thepopulation in the spring after winter. The population of two groups had rapid development in spring and the difference with control group was not significant (P>0.05). But it wassignificantly higher than other groups (P<0.05). The two groups were Group E and Group F.(3) The mineral elements and vitamins added to the syrup can significantly improve theantioxidant capacity of honeybees in the winter (P<0.05). The antioxidant capacity of Group xand Group y were significantly higher than the other experimental group after winter (P<0.05)and the activity of T-SOD and the content of MDA had no significant difference with thecontrol group after winter (P>0.05).The Experiment Two is the research on the effect of Fe, Zn and VC added to the beelarvae diet to the expression of the anti-oxidation gene in the indoor artificial breedingconditions. In this study, the bee larvae diet was adjusted (added Fe, Zn and VC in differentlevels) based on Apis mellifera larval diet formulation and environmental condition was likethe natural condition that bee larvae develop to adult bee. This study tried to investigate theeffect of important trace elements and vitamins on the antioxidant function of honeybees atthe molecular level.168one-day-old larvae from the same bee colony were transferred to724-well plates. Each plate was one group. One of all was control group and the diet is basaldiet; the other six were test group and the diet was test diet which was the basal diet added1.23mg/kg Fe,3.69mg/kg Fe,1.05mg/kg Zn,4.15mg/kg Zn,1.00mg/kg VC,3.00mg/kgVC, respectively. Bees just feathering out of the room after21days were collected and thetranscriptional levels of Vg, CuZnSod, MnSod were tested by the real time PCR. The resultsshow:(1) Addition to the bee larvae diet could significantly affect the transcriptional levels ofthe3genes (P <0.05).(2) The expression of the3genes increased with the increase of thelevel of Fe, Zn and VC added to the diet.This study shows that the minerals and vitamins have a major impact on the winterperformance of the honeybees. If the content of minerals and vitamins in vitex honey wastaken as a basis value and the white sugar was taken as the energy compound sources, thefeeding effects of syrup added with120%of the mineral elements+150%of the vitamin orsyrup added with150%mineral elements+90%of the vitamin had no difference with vitexhoney. trace elements and vitamins in the larvae diet could induce the expression of Vg,CuZnSOD, MnSOD.