Emergency Queen rearing as a means of stocking hives in Tanzania! Or South Africa!
By A Y Kimishua

Introduction

With modern hives chance occupancy is less than 50% (Kangero 1981; Ndakidemi 1983 etc). Methods such as baiting, transferrign swarms and dividing established colonies could improve stocking from 50-70%. In order to try and achieve 100% stocking of hives, emergency queen rearing was carried out between April 1985 to June 1986, in one site on the lower plains and on one in the mountains.

Materials & Methods

Three colonies were used for each site and they were supplied with syrup (sugar:water 2:1). The colonies were supplied with foundation, and when they occupied two boxes one colony in each site was induced to rear drones by inserting a comb with drone cells next to the one which the queen was laying.

Six weeks later the other colonies at each site were deprived of six frames altogether, to start a queenless colony. Frames in the queenless colony were arranged with young larvae in the middle, then sealed brood , and food stores on the outside. After twleve days, a mating nucleus was made for each queen cell produced in the queenless colonies. Arrangement of frames in the mating nuclei was:

outside, sealed brood, next food stores, next foundation. On the same day queen cells were cut from the queenless colony and fixed below the top bar of the frame containg the sealed brood comb, with the lower (outer) end of the cell facing downwards. Each mating nucleus was inspected five days after each queen cell had been inserted to check for emergence, and seven days later to check for signs that the queen had mated.

Results

257 queens were reared in this manner, of which 148 were mated; 71 others were lost. 13 were accidentally killed or faulty. The above method was used over one calendar year.

Conclusions

Some queens laid only drones because of lack of drones to mate with them.

The rearing of drones to mate with the queens in queen rearing operations is recommended.

The queens should be handled with care, otherwise they may be deformed.

Mating nuclei should be fed with sugar syrup up to the time when the queens have been mated and are laying.

Acknowledgements

The site wishes to thank A Y Kimishua, Prof. N Hirji and D. Kihwele for making corrections to the original manuscript, and the following for support and technical suggestions:

Prof Dr. F Ruttner, Dr B Moshi, G Ntenga, Hassan Liana, and Beekeeping staff in Arusha.

Web editor: Bibliography

Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Apiculture in Tropical Climates, Cairo 1988. IBRA.

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