Читать книгу Honey Bee Medicine for the Veterinary Practitioner - Группа авторов - Страница 96

A queen's performance is mainly measured by how eggs she lays each day.

Practical application: A queen's potential performance is often throttled by the number of prepared, thermoregulated, empty brood cells available in the hive. A good queen cannot exhibit her full laying capacity until the cluster covers at least 10 deep combs, and even then she would be limited if there were appreciable amounts of honey or beebread in those combs. The exceptional queen can nearly completely fill 10 deep combs with brood.

Young queens are typically more “exuberant” in their egg‐laying than are older queens (newly‐mated queens may even lay multiple eggs in a cell if there is not adequate room in the cluster). Young queens as a rule outperform older queens, although many queens are highly productive in their second year (which then often leads to swarming).

The performance of a queen is based upon a few main factors (listed in approximate order of importance):

1 How well she was fed and cared for during her larval development, which determines her egg‐laying capacity, ³

2 How well she was mated – the number of viable spermatozoa in her spermatheca, and

3 Environmental factors, such as chilling and heating during shipment, or pathogen or pesticide exposure in the colony.

A queen's potential performance is largely fixed by how lavishly she is fed jelly during the approximately four days between the emergence of her larva from its egg until her cell is sealed (she continues to feed and grow after sealing). And then she must get properly mated.