So called ‘queen banks‘ is a common practice in beekeeping. It involves storing excess queens in the spring to complete the hives in the fall. However to survive bees Honey plants in ‘queen banks’ set up outdoors are severely affected by climate change and forest fires. A scientific study shows that keeping queen bees inside chilled areas leads to longer survival and lower costs.
“Queen bees are the most critical individuals in a complex eusocial society,” begins the study, led by Washington State University. Researchers compared current summer outdoor queen storage practices common in Northern California. storage in closed storage facilities controlled temperature.
The treatments were divided into three groups: inner queen clusters, outer queen clusters, and a set of control queens without clusters. Each group was further subdivided with three different population ratios (50, 100 and 198 queens per bank).
There were days when temperatures exceeded 38ºC outside while the temperature remained stable at 15ºC in indoor queen houses.
The results were clear: Queen bees stored indoors in a refrigerator had a significantly higher survival rate (78%) than those stored outdoors (62%).. In chilled ‘queen banks’ more stable and necessary less labor. And no significant difference was observed in the quality and health of the surviving bees.
Reduce colony loss
The study, published in the Journal of Beekeeping Research, and potential future improvement of this queen bee storage system, could be “another piece of the final puzzle.” reduce bee colony loss every year“, notes lead author Brandon Hopkins.
Researchers believe that keeping queen bees indoors in temperature-controlled spaces during the summer will help strengthen “honeybee survival in the face of an epidemic.” changing weather“.
“Many honeybee losses are queen quality issues,” Hopkins says. “If we have a method that increases the number of queens available, or the stability of queens from year to year, that will help the number of colonies that survive the winter in a healthy state.”
Beekeepers need honey bee queens to maintain colonies that pollinate crops. Is there a Huge increase in demand for queen bees in spring. That’s when the beekeepers get back the losses of the previous year.
The problem is that once queen producers meet this demand from beekeepers, they cannot ‘turn off’ queen production. For this reason save too many queens to help meet the future needs of beekeepers who frequently replenish their queen stock after summer.
However, having a source of queens that beekeepers can purchase, rising temperatures already Forest fires, increasingly common. In addition, queen bees cannot be produced at high temperatures.
Like this refrigerated queen banksit appears as a possible solution to all these problems, only with food additives and without human intervention.
“The World’s Most Important Animals”
The search for a formula to preserve queen bees for a long time began in 1960. The first trials were recorded in Romania, where the queens, each with about 40 nurses, were caged and kept in incubators.
This method had some success, but subsequent efforts were directed at simplifying it and keeping a single queen in a cage and without food. the idea was: transporting, storing and wintering large numbers of queens. These techniques are currently applicable even on a small scale.
In 1981, 56 queens per hive were cared for in Israel. In 1982, 3,680 queens were shipped and 2,189 queens were sold in the United States. In 1985, 640 queens were also deposited in 24 orphan colonies in the United States, and the result was relatively good.
Bees Appear on ‘Red Book of Threatened Species’. The serious condition some bee species find themselves in is partly due to human behavior.
Among the reasons for the decrease in the number of bees, microwaves emitted from cell phones, which baffles them and leads them to death; HE pesticide use; the habitat loss; And invasive speciesLike the Asian hornet.
Scientists warned The extinction of bees would be catastrophic for the environment and humans..
The Royal Geographical Society of London named the bees “”.most important animals in the world“. is the only living thing that does not spread any diseasebecause it never carries pathogens.
In addition, 70% of the world’s agriculture is provided by the activities of bees. They support pollination and plant reproduction. According to the Universidad Mayor de Chile, this is equivalent to about 35% of food production.
Reference report: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00218839.2023.2165747
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