No abstract

Bee honey have a highly intensity and specialized microbiota which plays an important role in metabolism, immunity, growth as well as development an antagonistic effect against pathogens. Thus, the aim of work was isolation genotype characterization of some strains of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) from fresh clover bee honey. Five samples of fresh clover honey were analyzed to detect the microbiome contents. Dilution method and cultivation in selective media was used for counting of LAB strains, and the isolates were identified by their morphological characteristics that measured using Gram staining method and screened by catalase activity. Furthermore, the morphological characteristics of bacterial cells were examined using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The genotype of isolated strains was carried out by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) method. The results showed that, two novel bacterial strains of LAB were isolated from fresh clover bee honey. The strains of LAB which identified were; Lactobacillus brevis MK250013 and Lactobacillus casei MK250003.

Varroa destructor is one of the most deadly pests threatening honey bees and many acaricides have been used worldwide to combat the disease. Thus, this work aimed to evaluate Varoviga® and Bayvarol® acaricides under the Egyptian conditions compared to formic acid. Sixteen honeybee colonies were used and divided into four groups 4 colonies/each group: first group as control, second group treated with Bayvarol acaricide, colonies were treated with Varoviga acaricide as third group, and colonies treated with formic acid as fourth group. Results showed that, formic acid had the major significant effect on varroa mites, followed by Bayvarol then Varoviga acaricides with no significant difference between them. Moreover, the largest increase in honey store areas were found in the colonies treated with formic acid followed by Varoviga and Bayvarol acaricides, with all treatments leading to an increase in brood area without significant variations between them. No chemical residues were present in honey and wax samples that obtained from treated colonies. Regarding the financial coast, Varoviga appears to be an ideal alternative to formic acid, especially when it is not possible to use formic acid. The results of this work indicated that the effective varroa mite acaricides was formic acid, Bayvarol, and Varoviga, respectively.

This study was carried out in the apiary yard of Agricultural Experimental Station, Faculty of Agriculture, Cairo University, Giza Governorate, Egypt, during the active season of 2014, (from March to October). The work determined the effect of stored queens densities (20, 30 and 40 queen / colony), cage level (upper and lower levels) and it's position (peripheral and middle positions) on the supersedure rate of queens stored in queen-right colony for 45 and 75 days. Storing mated queens in the mentioned densities had a significant effect on their replacement rate, as the lowest significant replacement rate was for storing 20 and 30 mated queens (20.0% and 30.0%, respectively), while density of 40 queens had the highest significant percentage (45.0%). Concerning the upper and lower levels of storing cages, the mean percentages of supersedure reached it's highest rank when the cages contained queens stored in the lower level (35.0%) of the holding frame, while the upper level had a less significant mean of replacement recording 25.0%. Queens stored at the peripheral position had a higher significant supersedure rate (45.0%), while only 20.0% of the queens stored in the middle position have been replaced. Supersedure rate was influenced positively with increase of storage period, as queens stored for 75 days had the highest significant replacement rate (35.6%) comparing to the 45 days storage period (27.2%).The overall supersedure rate ranged from 30.0% to 32.5% throughout the experiments, which encourage and give another importance to of storing mated honeybee queens.

Virgin honeybee queens, were held in the centre of brood nest of both queenless and queenright strong colonies using two types of cages and fed by workers through a wire screen holes, emerging cage (EC) with two wire screen sides and Benton cage (BC) with one side of wire screen. Mean survival rate of stored queens in both cage types were not differ significantly. Storage virgin queens within queen-right colony was influenced reversely by the presence of colony laying queen as the survival rate was significantly lower (68.0%) than queens stored in queenless colonies (77.4%). The attractiveness of introduced virgin queens 30 days old to workers increased when the duration of queenlessness increase from 1 to 7 days and also, the acceptance percentage of them. The number of workers attracted by virgin queens was increased with the storage periods (3, 15 and 30days) as the lowest significant number was for the 3 days period, while there were no significant differences between the rest of periods. The younger and older queens were most significantly accepted than the intermediate ones. Workers in the 5 days queenless nuclei were more attracted and easily accepted the introduced virgin queens than those in similar queenless strong colonies.