Correct queen maintenance before and after instrumental insemination, tested in Egypt

A common Egyptian method of storing several queens in one bee colony, and caging them after instrumental insemination, was compared with a method recommended by the author. When queen cells were introduced into nuclei instead of virgin queens, the acceptance increased from 40-60% to 100%. Storage of virgins in a queen bank resulted in injuries to the queens, especially to their legs. When the storage period was shortened from 10 to 4 days after emergence, the percentage of non-injured queens increased from 46 to 100%. Legs of accepted, freely moving virgin queens were not injured. When queens were caged after instrumental insemination, only 1.8 million spermatozoa entered the spermatheca, but when newly inseminated queens were released, 5.1-5.2 million sperms entered. Thus a 2.8- to 2.9-fold increase was achieved.