Agricultural Utilization and Year-Round Rearing Techniques of Bumblebees in Korea

Abstract

Commercially managed bees are available for pollination services and are used in large commercial fields, small gardens, or enclosures such as greenhouses and screen houses. This paper describes the current status and agricultural utilization of commercially managed bumblebees as well as bumblebee rearing techniques in Korea. We surveyed the use rate and number of bumblebees for the pollination of 10 major horticultural crops and fruit trees in Korea; in 2009, the use rates were approximately 7.9% and 2.8%, respectively. The use number of bumblebees as pollinators was more than 64,345 colonies, which included 51,400 colonies for 10 major horticultural crops and 12,945 colonies for 10 major fruit trees in 2009. The value of bumblebees as pollinators in 2009 in Korea was estimated at more than 5,100,000,000 won. We also describe feeding, rearing room conditions, colony initiation, mating and diapause breaks to establish year-round mass rearing techniques of the bumblebee Bombus ignitus.

The effects of commercial propagation on bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) foraging and worker body size

“…This stress may lead to selection for performance in lab conditions: previous research has shown commercial B. terrestris to produce significantly more gynes and workers than a native genotype in a common garden laboratory rearing experiment, with hybridization between commercial and native genotypes generally resulting in intermediate expression of these colony traits (Gosterit and Baskar 2016). This difference may be unsurprising, given producers of commercial bumble bees are known to select for colonies that establish quickly and grow rapidly (Yoon et al 2011).…”