| Apis cerana cerana Fabricius is one of the most popular honeybee species, and iswidely distributed all over China except the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region andthe Northern Inner Mongolia. At present, Apis cerana cerana Fabricius, as the valuablelocal honeybees, has been a rearing of2million groups. However, it is still reared bytraditional techniques now, and the queens of honeybees are swarmed naturally. As thelimitation of Apis cerana cerana in production, the technology of queen rearing hasmany problems, including the low larvae acceptance and the quality of queen rearing. Inthis present work, we studied the queen rearing technology of Apis cerana cerana,aiming at the development of local honeybee mass-rearing and management.The experiments were conducted at in the experimental station in ChongqingAcademy of Animal Sciences. According to the key factors that affected larvaeacceptance of the artificial queen cell and the quality of the artificially reared queen inthe process of artificially reared queen, the natural cells of the Chinese honeybee werestudied. The effects of different material and size of cell, larvae grafting method, theinstar of the grafted larvae，adding honey and/or royal jelly, and cell density on thelarvae acceptance were conducted. The effects of egg size, the larvae instar, and caliberqueen cells on the queen quality were conducted. The results indicated as follows.1. The characteristics of natural queen cells in the colonies of Chongqing areaswere investigated:1)the shape of the cells is turbination, the maximum diameter is9.02±0.27mm, the depth from the maximum diameter to the bottom is6.41±0.43mm.2)The natural queen cells were mainly appear on the pupae combs(64.29%),27.14%queen cells were built on the eggs and larvae combs, the rest8.57%queen cells werefound on the combs mixed with eggs, larvae and pupae.2. The artificial queen cell were made from two different materials: plastic andbee wax, larvae acceptance after grafting show a significant difference（P＜0.01):76.59%and56.75%for wax cells and plastic cells, respectively. The caliber of theartificial queen cells has an effect on the larvae acceptance:8.00mm caliber cells hadthe highest acceptance:77.78%, significantly different from9.00mm caliber cells and 10.00mm caliber cells, which have grafting larvae accepted by54.45%and47.78%,respectively. The depth of the artificial queen cells has no significant impact on thelarvae acceptance.3. As the respect of larvae grafting method, single or double grafting hassignificant different acceptance:69%and91%, respectively.4. The instar of the grafted larvae has no significant impact on the acceptance（P＞0.05）:74.4%one day old larvae were accepted, and77.78%,73.33%for two day oldlarvae and three day ole larvae, respectively.5. When grafting larvae, honey and/or royal jelly were add to the artificial queencells, but results indicate that this treatment is not necessarily needed, the acceptance forthe non added queen cells is77.78%,72.22%and78.70%for honey added a d royaljelly added treatment.6. The amount of the queen cells for each colony could also impact on theacceptance, when only15cells were introduced into the colony,84.44%was accepted,when35cells were introduced, the acceptance is not significantly differ from that of25cells were introduced, but when more than35cells were grafted, the acceptance issignificantly lower than that of30cells were grafted.7. The ovariole number is positively correlate with the birth weight, the heavierthe birth weight, the queen has more ovariole, the correlation coefficient is0.383(P=0.0235). The amount of the egg-laying shows no significant correlation with the birthweight.8. The size of the grafted eggs has significant effect on the birth weight of thebreed queens, when bigger eggs were grafted, emerged13.0mg birth weight heavierthan that of smaller eggs, which account7.14%of the birth weight. The size of thegrafted eggs also has significant effect on the ovariole number of the breed queens,when bigger eggs were grafted, the emerged queens have6ovarioles than that ofsmaller eggs emerged queens.9. The instar of the grafted larvae has significant effect on the birth weight of theemerged queens, the younger the larvae grafted, the heavier the queen emerged.10. The effect of caliber of the artificial queen cells on the birth weight of thebreed queens was investigated, results indicated that it makes no significant difference,the queens emerged from8.00mm caliber queen cells has a weight of181.33±7.37mg,178.00±13.96mg and183.00±10.24mg for9.00mm and10.00mm caliber queencells, respectively. The purpose of this article was studied the mainly influence factors of the larvaeacceptance in the artificial queen cell and the quality about the artificially-bred queen inthe process of rearing queens. We concluded that the plastic queen cell with8.00mmcaliber and7.00mm depth was best for Apis cerana cerana Fabricius, meanwhile thecell number was about25. The quality of queens which rearing by double grafting and1-day grafting larvae was the best. The results showed that the effective administrationof Apis cerana cerana Fabricius benefits for the apiculture development in China. |
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