Results showed that the feral bees had a higher egg-laying rate than the commercial bees. Queen cells from Russian stock, feral colonies and commercial queen stock emerged, mated and were placed into new nuc colonies with the same amount of worker bees. The team studied feral, Russian and commercial package bees when looking at the egg-laying behavior/rate of queens from different bee stocks. The queen cells will then hatch into future queen bees. He will place these in a nutrient-rich starter hive. Xaryn Cleare, an alumnus of the Li-Byarlay Lab, transfers young larvae from breeder queens into cell cups. At the same time, beekeepers can have more diversity in their queen and honey bee colony genetics in their backyard, which will promote more outbreeding and less inbreeding.” “Our approach is to lower the cost by providing 48-hour queen cells. “For many beekeepers, the bottleneck to diversifying their queen genetics is finding an affordable price for queen purchasing,” said Li-Byarlay. This abbreviated 48-hour method is promising because it’s faster and requires fewer resources than traditional queen-rearing. The traditional grafting process takes ten days and requires specialized knowledge and resources.įor this SARE project, Li-Byarlay successfully used a relatively new 48-hour method of grafting. “The outcome is to improve the quality and quantity of queen production in the region.”Ĭommercial queen bees start their lives through an activity that queen rearers call “grafting.” Grafting is when queen bee producers transfer young larvae from breeder queens into cell-building colonies. “We want to improve the beekeepers’ understanding of the biology of queen bees and help to transfer and distribute favorable genetics to more bee farmers,” said Li-Byarlay. With support from an NCR-SARE Partnership Grant, Li-Byarlay’s Lab worked with experienced queen producers in Ohio to improve the queen quality of honey bee stocks in Ohio. However, the limiting factor is too few queens and nuclei available to fulfill the demand of local beekeepers.” “We have a collection of bee stocks from feral colonies that are mite resistant with high mite biting behavior. “Promoting mite-resistant bees is one of the most effective ways to mitigate bee decline,” said Li-Byarlay. Her research lab focuses on honey bee genetics and behavior, and recently she has been exploring queen bee quality and genetic diversity. Li-Byarlay studies the genetics and behavior of honey bees and believes mite-resistant bees could help improve Ohio honey bees. Ohio beekeepers are losing 50-60 percent of their managed bee colonies each year, according to Hongmei Li-Byarlay, Associate Professor of Entomology at Central State University. Hongmei Li-Byarlay is working to improve the quality and quantity of queen bee production in Ohio.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |