In the present investigation, some effective factors on natural mating
successes of honeybee virgin queens were studied, such as: type of receiver colony
race, introducing methods of virgin queen, presence of brood and their stages in
receiver colonies for acceptance and mating of honeybee virgin queens.
Results showed that carniolan bee colonies accepted the highest percentage
(96.67%) of the introduces virgin queens, followed by both the first carniolan hybrid
colonies and Italian colonies (93.33%), the lowest significant percentage of the
accepted queens was recorded for the Egyptian virgin queens (70.00%).
Concerning pre-mating periods of the introduced virgin queens, results
revealed that there were no significant differences among periods of pre-mating
required by the introduced virgin queens received by different bee colonies.
Results of mating ability of the introduced virgin queens, Italian bees
encouraged the highest percentage (78.88%). However queens introduced cambian
and Egyptian bees colonies mated by the lowest percentage 65.92, 5416%
respectively.
Recording postmating periods of the tested queens showed that queens
introduced to carniolan bees recorded a shortest penod (2.78 days), while the longest
penod (3.37 days) was recorded to the first Italian hybrid.
Results revealed that the highest percentage of acceptance (96.67%) was
noticed with using half comb cage, while applying direct introducing method resulted
in a lowest percentage (36.67%) of acceptance of the introduced queens.
Through two years revealed that introducing virgin queens to the colonies have
mixed brood resulted in acceptance of the introduced virgin queens was the highest
rate (86.67 and 90.00%, respectively). On the contrary introducing virgin queen to
colonies having only sealed brood resulted in the lowest acceptance percentage
(66.67 and 63.33). Pre-mating period of the introduced virgin queens showed that the
shortest period with introducing to the colonies of the colonies of the mixed brood , it
was 3.06 days while with queen introduced to colonies having no brood 3.73 days.
Mating success percentage should that although queens introduced to the colonies
having mixed brood mated by the highest percentage (84.72%). Also1 in this colonies
(mixed brood) helped in shorting the post mating periods of the introduced queens.
The highest acceptance percentages through two years study (96.67 and
93.33% respectIvely) were recorded with introducing virgin queens to colonies 3
combs. However introducing virgin queens to colonies of 10 combs resulted ¡n
decreasing acceptance level of these queens (53.33 and 56.76% for two years study).
Concerning pre-mating periods of introduced queen no significant difference were
found among different treatment. Recording mating success of the introduced queens,
showed that queens introduced to colonies of 5 combs mated by the highest rate
78.88%, while the lowest level mating success (62.22%) was associated with those
queens introduced to colonies of 10 combs.