Possibilities of disease and parasite-resistant line generation through hygienic behavior selection in honeybees colonies (Apis mellifera L.) grown under Eastern Mediterranean conditions

This study was conducted to generate disease and parasite-resistant lines through hygienic behavior selection in honeybee colonies (Apis mellifera L.) grown under Eastern Mediterranean conditions. Hygienic behavior tests were performed in a total of 297 colonies under farmer conditions of Mersin, Adana, Osmaniye, Hatay and Kahramanmaraş provinces and 70 of them were selected as the starter colony. Of these colonies, 10 out of 30 were used for queen breeding and 20 were used for drone breeding. Queens were artificially inseminated in this study. Experiments were implemented in 3 years and a total of 4 generations were obtained. Average clearance rate was 61.31% in farmer conditions and this rate was increased to 65.32%, 67.88%, 68.57% and 70.26% for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th generations respectively. When the selection results were used, heritability of hygienic behavior was estimated to be between 0.03 and 0.11. Current findings revealed that hygienic behaviors of honeybees might be improved through selections but heritability of this trait was quite low, thus longer-duration researches should be implemented in this issue.