Further investigations on natural mating of instrumentally inseminated apis mellifera queens
Author(s)
J Woyke; Z Jasinski; C Fllszkiewicz
Abstract
Woyke (1963) showed that some instrumentally inseminated queens mate naturally before they start egg-laying. Woyke and Jasinski (1992) worked on a method to prevent natural mating of instrumentally inseminated queens without using queen excluders. Mutant, cordovan (cd) body coloured queens in groups of 12-16 were used. However, cd may affect worker bee interactions (Frumhoff, 1991). The 1992 work may be flawed because of the use of cd and because of the use of small sample sizes. Therefore, this study uses wild type (black and yellow) queens and drones, and larger groups.
