Selection of Apis mellifera L. Colonies for Quality Queen Rearing

Honey bees are playing a crucial role in agriculture production systems. A good population of industrious workers of a honey bee colony is an important factor that contributes to higher build up and ultimately the high productivity of the colony and also good for pollination. This population is attained only through the best performance of queen. Colony strength and productivity of a stock of bees depend primarily on the age and qualities of its queen (Ruttner, 1988 and Snelgrove, 1966). The European honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) is the basis of flourishing bee industry the world over. Since its introduction in India, a lot of need based research has been done on various aspects of management, bee flora, bee behavior, bee pathology. Bee breeding and stock improvement has remained neglected in India (Singh et al., 2007). There are possibilities of improvement of many characteristics of honey bee by means of selection of better bee stock. Therefore, studies on selection are greatly needed to identify honey bee colonies International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 9 Number 1 (2020) Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com


Introduction
Honey bees are playing a crucial role in agriculture production systems. A good population of industrious workers of a honey bee colony is an important factor that contributes to higher build up and ultimately the high productivity of the colony and also good for pollination. This population is attained only through the best performance of queen. Colony strength and productivity of a stock of bees depend primarily on the age and qualities of its queen (Ruttner, 1988 andSnelgrove, 1966). The European honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) is the basis of flourishing bee industry the world over. Since its introduction in India, a lot of need based research has been done on various aspects of management, bee flora, bee behavior, bee pathology. Bee breeding and stock improvement has remained neglected in India (Singh et al., 2007). There are possibilities of improvement of many characteristics of honey bee by means of selection of better bee stock. Therefore, studies on selection are greatly needed to identify honey bee colonies The investigations were aimed to select Apis mellifera L. colonies for queen rearing on the basis of their biological and economical characteristics. Significant variations have been found in various colony parameters viz. colony strength (4.54 to 10.43 no. of bee frames), brood area (1579.49 to 5086.25 cm 2 ), prolificness (271.52 to 874.35 no. of eggs laid / per day), pollen stores (79.75 to 401.84 cm 2 ) and honey stores (550.00 to 2162.50 g). The overall performance of the colonies was measured by average ranking value obtained by colonies for different colony parameters. They were rated on 1-5 point scale basis. The average score ranged from 1 to 4.8. On the basis of top score, top 12 colonies (M-1, M-2, M-6, M-7, M-8, M-13, M-14, M-15, M-19, M-20, M-22, M-25) were selected for quality queen production with average score between 3 to 4.8.
possessing desirable traits for further breeding programmes. A good quality queen can be reared from the better performing colonies so that the hereditary characters contributed by mother can be improved to a great extent, as the queen is the custodian of all the characteristics. Therefore, present studies on the selection of honey bee colonies were conducted for quality queen rearing.

Materials and Methods
The present investigations were carried out during March, 2018 to August, 2018, in apiary at the experimental farm of the Department of Entomology, College of Horticulture, Dr. YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Nauni, Solan, Himachal Pradesh. The selection of honey bee colonies was based on biological and economic characteristics like colony strength, brood area, prolificness, honey stores, pollen stores etc. Twenty five A. mellifera L. colonies were taken randomly from the existing stock and the performance of these 25 A. mellifera L. colonies on following parameters was recorded at 21 days interval (Al-Tikrityet al., 1971) (Fig 1 and 2).

Colony strength
The strength of each experimental colony was estimated by counting the number of frames covered with brood and bees.

Brood area
The brood area in the experimental colonies was recorded with the help of 1 inch wire grid fixed on a brood frame which was later expressed in square centimetre by following formula (Chhuneja et al., 1992). The factor 6.45 was used to convert brood area from square inch to square centimetre.

Prolificness
The egg laying rate of A. mellifera L. queens of all 25 experimental colonies was calculated on the basis of total brood area.
The measured total brood area was multiplied by factor 3.61, which was the number of cells in one square centimetre of brood comb. The total number of brood cells was later divided by 21 to obtain the everyday egg laying rate of queen bee (Singh et al., 2007).

Honey stores
The amount of nectar stored was measured and expressed in grams by visually on the basis of assumption that one Langstroth frame sealed with honey weighed 2 kg.

Pollen stores
The pollen stores of the colonies were measured by counting the number of cells in the wire grid covered by pollen. It is expressed in square centimetres.

Rating of various performance characters
The performance of experimental colonies of A. mellifera L. was rated on the basis of 1-5 point scale. The ranking was done for the five different parameters i.e. colony strength, brood area, prolificness, pollen stores and honey stores. Ranking of least performing colony was given 1 point, whereas the best performing colony was ranked the highest rank 5.

Statistical Analysis
The data recorded was significantly analyzed by using MS−Excel and OPSTAT. The mean value of data was subjected to statistical analysis as described by Gomez and Gomez (1986) by using Completely Randomized Design.

Selection of A. mellifera L. colonies
Data on performance of 25 A. mellifera L. colonies (Table 1) Table 1 also revealed that the maximum average pollen stores were recorded in colony number M-2 (401.84 cm 2 ) which was statistically at par to colony number M-6 (336.46 cm 2 ) and the minimum average pollen stores (79.75 cm 2 ) were recorded in colony number M-5 which was statistically similar to colony number M-12(81.38 cm 2 ), M-21 (97.13 cm 2 ) and M-18 (127.25 cm 2 ).
Among the 25 colonies, maximum average honey stores were recorded in colony M-7 (2162.5 g). The colony number M-16 (550 g) was recorded with minimum average honey stores which were statistically at par with colony number M-18 (650.00 g), M-12 (737.50 g) and M-21 (750 g).
In present selection study, significant variations have been found in various colony parameters like colony strength (4.54 to 10.43 bee frames), brood area (1579.49 to 5086.25 cm 2 ), prolificness (271.52 to 874.35 eggs laid / day), pollen stores (79.75 to 401.84 cm 2 ) and honey stores (550 to 2162.5 g) in existing stock of 25 A. mellifera L. colonies in university apiary maintained at Nauni, Solan.
The present findings are in conformity with Thakur (1994) who selected better honey producing breeder colonies on the basis of biological and economical characters. Monika (2017) reported significant difference among colony parameters i.e. pollen stores, colony strength, brood area, honey stores in Nauni conditions. The variations in colony parameters were also reported by Singh et al. (2007) and Sharma (2010).

Rating of various performance characters for selection of A. mellifera L. colonies
The performance of experimental colonies of A. mellifera L. was rated on the basis of 1-5 point scale (Table 2).    Figure.1 Visual observation of hive Figure.2 Bee frame

Ranking of 25 A. mellifera L. colonies for performance characteristics
The scoring of 25 A. mellifera colonies on the basis of their performance has been presented in Table 3. The overall performance of a colony was measured by average ranking value of the colony strength, brood area, prolificness, pollen stores and honey stores. In present study ranking and rating of honey bee colonies have been done on the basis of 5 point scoring system for each of the attributes and top score twelve colonies were selected for queen rearing. Singh et al. (2007) also used five-point scale for scoring of various performance characters to select better performing A. mellifera colonies for stock improvement programmed. Similarly, A. cerana (Anonymous, 2010) and A. mellifera (Sharma et al., 2017) colonies were ranked on five point scale and selected for further studies.
Significant variations have been found in various colony parameters like colony strength, brood area, prolificness, pollen stores and honey stores in the existing stock of 25 colonies in University apiary maintained at Nauni, Solan. These variations allow beekeepers and researchers to select best performing colonies from existing stock.