Effect of plant and animal origin products on quality of honey, growth parameters and foraging behavior of honey bee Apis mellifera Linnaeus in mustard crop
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Date
2017-03
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G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar - 263145 (Uttarakhand)
Abstract
The preliminary and innovative studies on effect of eco-friendly plant and animal origin products were conducted to evaluate their bio-efficacy on the growth parameters, foraging behaviour of honey bee in mustard crop as well as their comparative toxicities to inner hive bees and outer forager bees with effect on quality of honey samples collected from treated A. mellifera bee colonies during 2015-17 at G.B. Pant university of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, Uttarakhand. During the field experiments, the data collected on the effect of eco-friendly products on honey bees reared in, both newly drawn and one year old beeswax frames for six generations, vividly suggested that these eco-friendly formulations did not have any adverse effect on the growth aspects of honey bees, in turn the results were showing the synergistic effect of these products as the per cent egg hatching in old frames and new frames for all formulations was above 75%. There was no adverse effect on overall mean weight of all stages of worker honey i.e. (larval, pupal and newly emerged bees) .The overall impact of animal based products namely Desi cow urine, Buffalo urine and Jersey urine on all life stages of honey bees was fruitful, as the mean sealed worker brood areas for six generations was found highest in Desi cow urine for both old and new frame as (304.26 cm2) and (311.63 cm2), respectively. But, Goat urine and plant extracts such as Neem leaf cow urine extracts (NLCUE) and Ajwain seed cow urine extracts (ASCUE ) did not show promotion in growth parameters of honey bee with the least mean sealed worker brood areas calculated ranged from in old bee frames and in new bee frames respectively and require further investigations to validate their outcomes. The effect of eco-friendly plant and animal origin products showed affirmative results for foraging rate and speed of honey bees, A. mellifera in treated mustard crop. The foraging rate of honey bee, showed great variability in different time intervals, the maximum foraging rate of (24 flowers visit/bee/ min) was observed between 12:00-1:00 PM on the mustard crop sprayed with Desi cow urine @ 20%, while the highest foraging speed (5.0 sec/bee/flower) was observed in Holstein cow urine @ 20% sprayed crop both at 12:00-1:00 PM and 3:00-4:00 PM. The minimum visits of 6.67 flowers/bee/min. was recorded in ASCUE @ 2.0% between 3:00-4:00PM. The minimum foraging speed was observed in crop sprayed with goat urine @ 20% with (2.0 sec/bee/flower). The effect of eco-friendly formulations are further justified by the yield of the mustard crop that was observed maximum in Desi cow urine sprayed crop (29.89 (q/ha) and minimum in chemical Imidacloprid treated crop (11.35 q/ha) with average yield of mustard seeds (23.38 q/ha) was calculated in untreated mustard crop. The laboratory studies on the comparative toxicities of tested eco-friendly plant and animal origin products for inner hive bees and outer forager bees also revealed that the lowest concentrations i.e. animal urine @ 20%, plant based extract @ 1.0% showed less than 50% mortality even after 72 h. The honey samples drawn from the bee colonies treated with eco-friendly formulations does not have any contaminants like heavy metals, microbial load and HMF and the other standard parameters that govern the quality and purity of honey such as moisture, glucose to fructose ratio were also within the prescribed food limit. Thus, it may be concluded from the present investigations that the tested eco-friendly plant and animal origin products are completely safe, readily available, and almost free of cost to farmers and have long term effect without having any adverse effect on honey bees and hive products and can easily be incorporated for honey bee management programme in Beekeeping.
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