CERTAIN FACTORS AFFECTING ROYAL JELLY PRODUCTION IN HONEY BEE Apis mellifera COLONY

Elbassiouny,, A. M.; Abdel-Mageed, M. I.; EL-Sharawi, M. O.; El-Wakeel, A. A.

doi:10.21608/jppp.2008.217788

CERTAIN FACTORS AFFECTING ROYAL JELLY PRODUCTION IN HONEY BEE Apis mellifera COLONY

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Plant Protection Dept., Faculty of Agriculture, Ain shams University.

² Plant Protection Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center

³ Research center, Misr University for Science & Technology.

10.21608/jppp.2008.217788

Abstract

The role of season activity, food regimes and worker's age of honey bee colonies on royal jelly production were studied during 2005 and 2006 seasons using honey bee colonies headed with open mated local carnica queens, Apis mellifera carnica.
The results showed that the amounts of produced royal jelly were highly significantly affected by the rearing season. The amounts of royal jelly could be arranged descendingly according to rearing season: spring (11.20 g. / colony; 220 mg. / cup), summer (9.04 g. / colony; 200 mg / cup), autumn (6.06 g. / colony; 170 mg / cup) and winter (4.70 g. / colony; 140 mg / cup). Good rebuilding of the colonies obtained in spring, followed by summer, autumn and winter. This means that spring considered as the most appropriate season for royal jelly production followed by summer season.
Feeding the colonies on food containing the main necessary elements (honey, and pollen), would give higher amount of royal jelly (9.5 g. / colony; 180 mg/ cup), compared with a colony fed on honey only that produced 7.40 g. / colony; 210 mg / cup.
It is advisable to use housed worker honey bees (young bees) to obtain reasonable amount of royal jelly (6.04 g / colony; 200 mg / cup) as compared with the colonies having field worker honey bees (old bees), which recorded 2.96 g. / colony; 153 mg /cup.

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