The Effects Of Queen-rearing Without Larval-grafting And Two Esters Of The Brood Pheromone On The Queen Quality Of Apis Cerana Cerana

Honeybee queens which undertake the main task of colony reproduction, are the key component of their colonies. However, their egg-laying ability enormously decreases from the second year. Rearing the high quality queens become the priority of apiculture. This study designed a queen-rearing device without larvae-grafting specially for the Apis cerana cerana. This instrument contains artificial plastic comb foundation, detachable comb bottom, single queen cell, queen rearing article etc.In order to search the better method for queen rearing, this study used Apis cerana cerana as experiment materials, and compared the acceptance rate of queen cells,newly-emrged weight, thorax weight and width of new-emerging queens reared with and without larvae-grafting. The gene expression of vitellogenin(Vg) and transferrin(Trf) from these two treatments was tested by qRT-PCR, and their ovarioles were counted by paraffin section. The results showed that queen-rearing without larvae-grafting had a significantly lower acceptance rate of queen cells compared to artificial one. Nevertheless, the Vg gene expression in queens from queen-rearing without larvae-grafting method was significantly higher than that in the artificial treatment, but there was no significant in the morphological index, ovarioles and the Trf gene expression between two treatments.In order to explore the effects of methyl palmitate(MP) and methyl linoleate(ML) on the queen quality of Apis cerana cerana, 1μL solution which contains 0.0%, 0.1%, 1.0%,10.0% of MP or ML was added into queen cells of 60-63 h old queen larvae respectively.Our results showed that adding 1.0% ML solution significantly reduced the newly-emrged weight thorax weight and Vg gene expression of queens compared to the control, and adding 10.0% ML solution significantly reduced the index, ovariles and Vg gene expression of queens. Low ML and all MP solution had no significant effect on all parameters, and gene expression of Trf was also not different among all treatments.There was no significant difference on queen quality between these two queen-rearing methods, but the Vg gene expression was considerably higher whereas the acceptance rate queen cells was lower in the former method compared to the later one, and adding ML and MP could not improve the queen quality in the queen quality as well. Therefore, it is better to choose the proper queen rearing method according to the actual situations.