Abstract:
Although the effects of numerous factors (such as age of grafted larvae, supplemental feeding and mating) have been
studied on the honey bees of Europe and America, they remain unknown for African bee races. To bridge this gap, a
study was undertaken at the icipe Karura forest apiaries in Kenya to determine the effect of larval age and supplemental
feeding on morphometrics and oviposition in the honey bee Apis mellifera scutellata queens. Queens were reared in 12
colonies with two feeding regimes, fed and not fed. Five larval age groups: 6, 12, 24, 36, and 48 h old, were grafted
from each colony. We measured the fresh weight, spermatheca volume and the external parameters of the emerged
queens and compared the oviposition rate by counting the number of eggs laid daily in naturally mated queens (NM)
and artificially inseminated queens (AI). Our results show that age of grafted larvae and supplemental feeding signifi-
cantly affect the morphometrics of the reared queens (p = 0.001), while oviposition rate is more or less the same in
NM and AI. This work could eventually be used to select the best breed of honey bee subspecies in East Africa and
improve queen rearing methods.
