The influence of season, genotype and colony type on the acceptance of introduced honeybee queens into anatolian colonies

In technical beekeeping, rearing queens under controlled conditions and acceptance of queens into new colonies are important process to produce next generation. In this study, we investigated on the acceptance of queens Aegean ecotype of Anatolian honeybee (E), Caucasian (C) and Italian (I) races into the package and normal colony in two periods (spring and summer). It was also determined queen rearing disposition of colonies after queens accepted to colonies during seven weeks. In this study, it was also found that queen acceptance rates (96%) in the summer are different (P<005) from queen acceptance rates (86%) in the spring. There was no significant difference in the queen accepted rates between package colonies (%89) and normal colonies (%91). Queen accepted rates were also not different among the Aegean ecotype queens (%89), Italian queens (%95) and Caucasian queens (%86). In the study, there was significant difference in the queen renewal rate between spring season (%34) and summer season (% 0) (P<0.05). There was no significant difference in renewal rates of queens between normal colonies (% 23) and package colonies (%19). Caucasian race (%11) was different from Italian race (%30) for queen renew rates ( P<0.05 ). Aegean ecotype (%21) was similar to two genotypes. According to these results it was found that it is effective environmental factors on acceptance of queens and renewal rate of queens.