Parameters for Royal Jelly Production in Africanized Honeybees

摘要

This research was carried out to estimate variance, covariance and genetic parameters for royal jelly production in Africanized honeybees. Twenty Africanized mother queens, donated by beekeepers to produce daughter queens were evaluated for royal jelly production of their workers, the acceptance percentage of grafted larvae (%), royal jelly production per colony (g) and per cup (mg), in hive and mini-hives. Data were submitted to unicharacter and thricharacter analyses usingBayesian inference. The heritability estimates in unicharacter analysis ranged from 0.01 to 0.08, and for thricharacter from 0.004 to 0.01. The genetic correlation values were positive for royal jelly production per colony and per cup (0.29), for larvae acceptance and royal jellyproduction per colony (0.42), and for larvae acceptance and royal jelly production per cup (0.06). The royal jelly production had environmental influence. The genetic correlation indicates that selection to increase royal jelly production per colony will increase larvae acceptance and royal jelly production per cup.