Curing Methods of Laying Workers in New Honeybee Divisions

Abstract

Laying workers is one of the most important problems facing the beekeepers all over the world. The aim of this work is to evaluate some curing methods of the laying workers include introducing, new mated queens (less than 4 weeks old), new virgin queens (72 hr. old), ripe sealed queen cell (48 hr. before emergency) and unsealed brood frame in queenless colonies. Data revealed that after the first, the second and the third week there is a significant difference between all treatment and the positive control. Whereas after the fourth week there is no significant differences between the first treatment, (colonies treated with introduction mated queens) and the positive control (without any laying worker egg cells.) which indicated these colonies cured from laying worker eggs, followed significantly by the virgin queens, ripe sealed queen cells and unsealed brood treatments with the means 443, 512, 564 and 558.7 laying workers egg cells/ colony, respectively. There is no significant differences between the colonies treated with introduction of unsealed brood and the negative control. Also, the means of the drone sealed brood cell\ colony after two and four weeks were discussed