Some biological aspects of honey bee colonies in relation to the age of beeswax combs

Abstract

A study was carried out to investigate the influence of differently aged wax combs (foundation as zero, 1, 2, 3 and 4 − 6 years old) on some biological aspects that affect the productivity of honey bee colonies. Twenty-five package colonies were equally divided and situated on each of the tested combs during the spring of two successive years (2018 and 2019). The obtained results revealed that worker brood areas, worker population, worker life span, weights of newly emerged workers and drones, and honey yield significantly increased with fresh combs. However, drone brood areas increased with old combs, and wax combs age had no effect on worker survivorship. It could be concluded that the wax combs aged from zero (foundation) to three years old (light color combs) are more preferable in the performance and productivity of honey bee colonies than the older (dark color combs) ones.

Keywords:

• wax comb age
• honey bee colony
• worker and drone brood
• worker life span
• honey production
• weight of emerged workers and drones

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge and appreciate the reviewers for their recommendations and valuable comments. Thanks is also extended to Professor T. A. Osman and Dr. Ghada Alaghdar for language manipulation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.