Selective breeding for less stinging trait in Apis mellifera Linnaeus colonies
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Date
2022
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Punjab Agricultural University
Abstract
Studies on ‘Selective breeding for less stinging trait in Apis mellifera Linnaeus colonies’ were carried out at Campus Apiary at Entomological Research Farm, Department of Entomology, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), and at an isolated mating yard at PAU Seed Farm, Ladhowal, during 2021-2022. The studies comprised of screening 100 A. mellifera colonies for less stinging behaviour, selective breeding for development of less stinging colonies and assessment of gentle colonies for colony productivity and foraging activity. The defensive behaviour of the colonies was assessed by alarm pheromone assay. The observations recorded were time taken for the first sting (seconds), number of stings received per minute and number of bees recruited for defense per min and scores were given on a five-point scale of 1 to 5 wherein score of 1 represented the most aggressive and 5 represented the gentlest colony. Screening revealed that the mean number of stings per min, ranged between 1.33 to 22.67; depicting 23 colonies to be the gentlest (score 5) and four the most aggressive (score 1), whereas 49, 18 and 6 colonies scored 4, 3 and 2, respectively. Time taken to first sting, ranged between 3.00 to 23.00 s; two colonies took >20 s (score 5), 10 took 15-19.99 s (score 4), 26 took 10-14.99 s (score 3), 54 took 5.0-9.99 s (score 2) and 8 colonies took < 5 s (score 1) for the first sting. The number of bees recruited per min for defense ranged between 3.67 to 41.67; six colonies got score 5, 50 got score 4, 37 got score 3, five got score 2 and two colony scored 1. Based on the cumulative score from all the three parameters, 10 colonies scored 13-15, 50 got 10-12 score, 34 got 7-9 score and six got 4-6 score. From the 10 selected least stinging colonies, five daughter queens were reared from each. The comparative assessment of the defensive behaviour between selected mother colony, F1 colonies and control unselected colonies revealed that both mother and F1 colonies had lesser number of stings/min, took more time to first sting and had lesser number of bees recruited for defense thus depicting defensive behaviour to be heritable. For all the three defensive characteristics, among the 50 F1 colonies, there was 62 per cent improvement compared to just 10 per cent in the original stock of screened 100 colonies Correlation among the three defensive traits revealed that the number of stings/min was positively correlated with the number of bees recruited for defense and inversely with the time taken for first sting, implying that bees of a colony that sting more number of stings on the leather ball have more number of bees recruited for defense and take less time to initiate defense. Bee breeding for less stinging traits had no negative influence on colony growth, productivity and foraging activity. The information generated from the study on the less stinging behaviour of A. mellifera will be helpful in further bee breeding work towards developing less stinging A. mellifera strain.
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Madaan, Anmol (2022). Selective breeding for less stinging trait in Apis mellifera Linnaeus colonies (Unpublished M.Sc. thesis). Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab, India.