Queen research

摘要

Commercially reared queen bees often had a low survival rate when introduced into hives, or they may have a satisfactory introduction success rate but followed by poor performance by the established queen. New Australian research has found the most suitable age to introduce queen bees into established honey bee colonies is between 24 and 35 days of age. This gave the highest survival and performance rates for introduced queen bees. A report by John Rhodes and Doug Somerville for the Rural IndustriesResearch and Development Corp. said there was no significant difference for queen survival and performance between queen bees held in mating nuclei for 24 or 31 days or a queen bank to 31 days. All three methods were superior to queen bees held in a queen bank to 24 days of age. Queens were caught from mating nuclei at 17 days of age and placed in the queen bank.