Instrumental insemination: A nontraditional technique to produce superior quality honey bee (Apis mellifera) queens
Khalid Ali Khana b c✉, Muhammad Khalid Rafiqued, Muhammad Akbar Lasharie, Aneela Iqbalf, Rashid Mahmoodd, Agha Mushtaq Ahmede, Fahad Nazir Khosoe, Saboor Ahmadg, Badria M. Al‐Shehrib c h, Mohammed Elimam Ahamed Mohammedc e h, Hamed A. Ghramha b c
- aBiology Department, Faculty of Science, King Khalid University, P. O. Box 9004, Abha 61413, Saudi Arabia
- bResearch Center for Advanced Materials Science (RCAMS), King Khalid University, P.O. Box 9004, Abha 61413, Saudi Arabia
- cUnit of Bee Research and Honey Production, Faculty of Science, King Khalid University, P. O. Box 9004, Abha 61413, Saudi Arabia
- dHoney Bee Research Institute (HBRI), National Agricultural Research Centre (NARC), Islamabad, Pakistan
- eDepartment of Entomology, Faculty of Crop Protection, Sindh Agriculture University, Tando Jam, Sindh, Pakistan
- fDepartment of Zoology, The Women University Multan, Pakistan
- gKey Laboratory of Pollinating Insect Biology, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Apicultural Research,Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
- hDepartment of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, King Khalid University, Abha 61413, Saudi Arabia
- ✉Corresponding author
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Abstract
Honey bee queen serves as a colony's centre hub, producing eggs and releasing pheromones to keep a colony together. Artificial insemination in Apis mellifera, trending research these days, is a consistent method for controlling mating in honey bees. Quality queen production is essential to maintaining a healthy bee colony. A review of comparative studies on superior quality honey bee (A. mellifera) queens production through nontraditional techniques and various factors affecting the instrumental insemination process has been compiled in this article. Several factors like; rearing conditions, stress, inseminator’s skills, food availability, mating age of queen, queen banking, temperature, sperms stored in the spermatheca, sperms quality and quantity, semen handling and storage, CO2 and nitrogen treatments, pheromones affect the performance of instrumentally inseminated queens. Moreover, different data collection showed that different methods used for queen treatment which have a significant effect on the performance of the queen. This review suggested that artificially inseminated queens could be more productive if experiments were done with proper attention and precision.