A honeybee colony swarming model
1986
McLellan, A.R. | Rowland, C.M.
A reproductive swarming model considering the factors necessary for a parennt colony of honeybees to produce two daughter colonies capable of surviving the winter and breeding in the following summer has been constructed. It is based on the following assumptions: (a) a swarm normally requires a minimum of 8000 workers to be viable; (b) the old queen stops laying eggs 5 days before swarming occurs; (c) the new queen begins egg production 11 days after swarm emergence; (d) after swarming both queens rapidly attain a high daily rate of oviposition; (e) half the workers accompany the old queen to the new colony site. This model produces responses which agree well with observational data. It has a swarming season of about 6 weeks and is most sensitive to the daily egg production rate of the queen, as successful swarms do not occur if this is less than 1000, while secondary, but unsuccessful, swarms are produced if it is greater than 1500. The length of the swarming season is also relatively sensitive to overwintering and pre-swarming colony size, and the length of the eggless periods of both queens at swarming, unlike the numbers of pre-adults reared by one worker, or the relative numbers of adults in the two daughter colonies, which have little effect unless assigned extreme values.
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