CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

For honey bees (Apis mellifera .L), the reward for pollination service is obtaining food: nectar, a sugar solution; or pollen, which contains a high percentage of proteins and lipids. There are also other floral rewards, ecologically relevant for pollinators, like resins and/or minor components, such as phytohormones and polyphenols. When rearing A. mellifera queens, several factors affect grafting success: the age of the grafted larvae; the design and position of the artificial queen cells; priming queen cells with royal jelly before grafting; and/or the nutrition of the queen rearing colony. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of two phytohormones: gibberellic acid (GA) and indole acetic acid (IAA) on queen cell production, the development of hypopharyngeal glands of nurse bees, and the performance of queen bees in colonies of A. mellifera. The results indicate that GA positively influences queen production efficiency in vertical orphaned colonies of A. mellifera. This could be related to the differences found in the head weight of the nurse bees that attend to the grafted queen cells, associated to a greater development of the hypopharyngeal glands. These results support the potential of plant metabolites as dietary supplements to improve queen bee production methods and their performance in honey bee colonies.

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