AI Article Synopsis
- Queen failure is a major reason for honey bee colony deaths, but the specific causes are often unclear.
- In a study, researchers looked at the relationship between brood patterns and queen quality in bee colonies and found no direct link.
- When queens from poor-brood colonies were placed in good-brood colonies, their brood patterns improved, indicating that factors beyond the queen herself affect brood quality.
Article Abstract
Failure of the queen is often identified as a leading cause of honey bee colony mortality. However, the factors that can contribute to "queen failure" are poorly defined and often misunderstood. We studied one specific sign attributed to queen failure: poor brood pattern. In 2016 and 2017, we identified pairs of colonies with "good" and "poor" brood patterns in commercial beekeeping operations and used standard metrics to assess queen and colony health. We found no queen quality measures reliably associated with poor-brood colonies. In the second year (2017), we exchanged queens between colony pairs ( = 21): a queen from a poor-brood colony was introduced into a good-brood colony and vice versa. We observed that brood patterns of queens originally from poor-brood colonies significantly improved after placement into a good-brood colony after 21 days, suggesting factors other than the queen contributed to brood pattern. Our study challenges the notion that brood pattern alone is sufficient to judge queen quality. Our results emphasize the challenges in determining the root source for problems related to the queen when assessing honey bee colony health.
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|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6359415 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/insects10010012 | DOI Listing |
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