الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Honey bees have high economic importance in bioconservation as they are responsible for pollination of 80% of our crops. Moreover, their products have high feeding and medical importance and income increasing. Honey bees feeding is an essential process for brood rearing, colony development and maintenance. Honey bees use pollen as their only source of protein. Nurseries have high demands for protein, since they are producing the high quality protein secretion, royal jelly. Honey bees consume abundant protein, to prepare for their function as brood raisers. In winter and early spring, as dearth periods, before pollen and nectar are available or in short supply, supplementary feeding may help the colony survive or make it more populous and productive.The recently developed bee production technologies pay a much higher attention towards use of manmade, “artificial” protein sources and pollen substitutes. So, pollen supplements and substitutes are the alternative solution, which may compensate the deficiency for colony survival until the next spring, the nectar flow season. This study conducted from winter to early spring and dealt with the effect of clover pollen as pollen supplement and corn gluten as pollen substitute diets on some parameters of honey bee newly emerged queens, nurse workers and contents of produced royal jelly.The experimental design comprised: a) A control colony was fed only a half-liter of sugar syrup (1 : 1, w/v) twice with 5 days interval. b)A colony was fed a half kg of the corn gluten patty (1 gluten : 2 sugar powder, w/w) and a half-liter of sugar syrup (1 : 1, w/v) twice with 5 days interval. c)A colony was fed a half kg of the clover pollen patty (1 pollen : 1 sugar powder, w/w) and a half-liter of sugar syrup (1 : 1, w/v) twice with 5 days interval. Honey bee queens were reared in the experimental colonies by the custom grafting method. The morphological and histological parameters of the produced newly emerged queens were studied. The nurse bee workers around the reared queen cells were dissected for their hypopharyngeal glands, which were morphologically and histologically investigated. The secreted royal jelly for feeding the growing honey bee queen larvae was collected and analyzed. These parameters indicate the effectiveness of the proteins diets on honey bee growth and development. |