Research And Application Of Honeybee Technology Without Larvae Grafting

In the beekeeping industry,beekeepers have to conduct artificial larvae grafting either for royal jelly harvesting or for rearing queens artificially.Artificially grafting larvae requires beekeepers to have good eyesight and high proficiency.There is an urgent need to remove this technical limitation,especially considering the situation of increasingly rising labor costs and agingbeekeepers in the beekeeping industry.Based on the biological characteristics of bees and the principle of bionics,we designed a food-grade plastic worker comb foundation with regular holes.The holesin the plastic worker comb foundation allow the assembly of larvae supporting devices or single queen cell bases.The idea was to first assemble the hollow plastic worker comb foundation and the larvae supporting device or queen cell bases together to make a complete comb foundation,and then to let the workers build the comb.Next,the queen is allowed to lay their eggs in the cells of the comb.This is followed by removing the larvae supporting device or queen cell bases and assembling them into the queen cell bar with regular holes.In this way royal jelly production or breeding queens can be achieved.This study tested the feasibility of the improved tenth generation of the non-grafting larvae technique of royal jelly harvesting and breeding queens,using the Italian bee(Apis mellifera ligustica)as the experimental system.First the number of combs in a colony which is about to swarm was reduced,and then the workers were allowed to build 10-12 pieces of combs based on the hollow plastic comb foundation.We then investigated the effect of royal jelly harvesting or breeding queens without larvae grafting.The experiment of royal jelly harvesting without artificially grafting larvae measured the egg-laying rate laying by one queen,two queens,multi-queen(four queens),the hatchability of spawn and the effect of royal jelly output.Then we compared the productive efficiency of royal jelly between honeybee bionic non-grafting larvae and traditional grafting larvae categories.The acceptance rate of newly assembled queen cells by nursing bees during royal jelly production was also measured.In the experiment of breeding queens without artificially grafting larvae we allowed a single queen to lay eggs for 6 h.Then the birth weight and the number of ovarioles of the newly bred queens that developed from the eggs were measured,and the relative expression level of Vg and Hex110 has also been measured.The methods of breeding queens without and with artificially grafting larvae were compared.The results showed that worker bees can build a complete comb based on the plastic hollow comb foundation,and the queen can lay eggs on the newly built comb.The egg laying rates of a single queen laying eggs,double queens,multi-queen were 91.24 %,92.45% and 91.29%respectively.The acceptance rates of newly assembled queen cells during royal jelly harvesting were 91.12%,92.63%and 90.19% respectively.There arenot significant differences with both indexes(the egg laying rates,the acceptance rates of queen cells)between the three methods.The weights of the newly queens using the method of egg-based breeding queens without artificially grafting larvae and the method of grafting larvae based breeding queens were 256.31±3.75 mg and 243.43±2.05 mg respectively.The number of ovarioles was 163.87±6.74 and 154.77±9.40 respectively.There are significant differences with both indexes(the weights of the newly queens,the numbers of queen ovarioles)between the two methods.The relative expression of Vg and Hex110 gene from the queens rearing from eggs is significantly higher than that of the queens rearing from larvae.This study showed that the improved tenth generation of non-grafting-larvae egg laying device can be used in royal jelly production and for breeding queens,and is worth promotion and application in the beekeeping industry.Based on the non-grafting larvae royal jelly production technology,we designed a royal jelly-gathering machine,which mainly includes the Royal jelly production bar conveying device,royal jelly-gathering device and separation device.The development of this machine was aimed at mechanizing the two main steps of the traditional royal jelly production process,which includes remove the larvae and gathering royal jelly manually,at the same time it took into account the convenience and practicality.The work efficiency of the royal jelly-gathering device was 81.52%~245.74% higher than that of gathering royal jelly manually when the number of the bar for royal jelly production was 6,12 and 24.