Multiple Queen-Rearing in Queenless Colonies of the Asian Honey Bee Apis cerana

Queen-rearing is one of major objectives of commercial beekeepers to maintain colonies (Morse, 1994). Worker bees are capable of raising a new queen mainly for colony reproduction or emergency queen-rearing to replace a failing or missing queen (Seeley, 1985). Sudden decline in queen mandibular pheromone availability induces supersedure (Fell & Morse, 1984; Pettis et al., 1995). Rearing of queen bees can be performed in queenright colonies and queenless colonies, however a higher effectiveness can be achieved in queenless colonies (Morse, 1994). Queen-rearing in queenright colonies utilizes frames of brood raised above a queen excluder in a strong colony and grafting 12-18 h old larvae into queen cell cups next to the brood in the upper chamber (Wilkinson & Brown, 2002). The factors that determine the rearing of queens are the age of the transferred larvae, the number of young worker bees available in the colony, availability of food, number of drones etc. In addition, the quality of the resulting queen is determined by various factors such as weather conditions, availability of nectar and pollen, and even grafting methods play key role in the rearing of good quality queens (Kaftanoglu & Kumova, 1992). During grafting, worker larvae are kept in artificial queen cups and placed in queenless colonies for acceptance. Doolittle (1889) developed a successful method of rearing queens in Apis mellifera colonies by grafting larvae. The queen cells with larvae were accepted, fed, and finished in queenright colonies without a queenless period. Laidlaw (1979) and Laidlaw and Page (1997) described the general principles of a queenright starter-finisher method for queen-rearing in A. mellifera colonies. This method is commonly used to commercially produce royal jelly or queens. The objective of the present study is to develop a suitable method of queen-rearing in queenless colonies of Apis cerana without grafting larvae.