study of various methods of rearing, and the period of placing colonies in sunflower field on honey bee performance

In this project three management methods for raising bees in the sunflower farm for the purpose of investigating reasons for decreased population of bees were compared. For this objective, in the beginning of 2002, 64 bee colonies were selected and 64 coeval sister queens were introduced to them. The colonies were established in August in the Borkhar region of Isfahan and then their populations, number of brood and amount of honey was made identical. To study the three apiculture factors including 1. Time of establishing colonies in the sunflower farm in the four levels of three, five, seven and nine weekly periods 2. Population (at two levels) 3. Use or absence of queen excluder, in the frame work of an experimental completely random project through the factorial method with four replicates was performed. During the trial, population size of adults, population of broods, amount of honey and pollen were recorded at weekly intervals. Also the hibernation factor (hibernal losses and level of the consumed food) was studied. At the end, data were statistically analyzed employing the factorial procedure through SAS software. Results of the study showed that the period of keeping colonies in the farm is effective on queen's oviposition which showed a significant difference (P0.05). The largest oviposition was that of the three week treatment and effect of period of keeping colonies in the sunflower farm on population size in three, five, and seven week treatments was significant (P0.05) however, in nine-week treatment no significant difference was seen. In addition, effect of keeping colonies in the sunflower farm in five-week treatment was the highest amount of honey (P0.05). Population status of colonies from the viewpoint of their strength of weakness on the level of queen's oviposition was effective and significant (P0.05) such that the highest level of oviposition was relevant to colonies with strong population. Additionally, population size had a significant effect on growth of colony population (P0.05) and the highest growth was that of colonies with the strongest populations. The population status as well was effective and showed a significant discrepancy (P0.05). The highest honey production was that of treatments with strong populations. Use of queen excluder showed that employing the excluder has not been effective on the queen's oviposition in the colonies (P0.05). Also results revealed that effect of use of queen excluder on colonies with strong population compared with those of weak colonies' population growth is significant (P0.05). Also asu regards effect of using queenexcluder on honey production, it was revealed that in such colonies where queen excluders were used, 9.639 kg honey and in those colonies where excluder had not been used 6.2 kg honey had been collected (PO.05). Interaction of treatments showed that the highest oviposition was that of treated colonies established for a period of three weeks and with a strong population and without excluder. Of course with strong treatments and shorter establishment periods no significant difference was seen with queen excluder treatment. Also, interaction of treatments showed that those treatments established for a period of five weeks in the sunflower farm, equipped with queen excluder and with strong population had the highest population growth (3.75 frames). Finally the highest level of honey production was that of the five-week treatment with a strong population and equipped with queen excluder and the lowest amount of honey production was that of the nine week treatment with a weak population and without queen excluder. Although results showed that the factors of period of establishment, population status and queen excluder had no significant effect on using the estival food (PO.05) however, interaction of treatments showed that the highest losses are relevant to establishment of colonies with weak population and use of queen excluder during a period of five weeks. Also, the highest level of use of honey reserve (3.3 53 kg) was that of the nine-week treatment period with a weak population, that were established without queen excluder in the sunflower farm which shows a significant difference (PO.05).