रानी मधुमक्खी का महत्व
The performance of the honeybee colonies depends on the inherited qualities ofi ts queen. The queen passes on her characteristics pertaining to longevity, industriousness, disease resistance, temperament, swarming, absconding and other several behavioural attributes to its offspring. Thus, for successful and profitable beekeeping a young, mated and quality queen bee in honeybee colony is highly desirable. Queen bee is the most important member of the honeybee colony owing to the following reasons:
- Queen bee is generally the only single individual in honeybee colony which is capable of laying eggs fertilized and unfertilized eggs .which result in the growth of honeybee colony and, hence, in itshigher productivity.
- Colony development, productivity and behavioural characteristics of the progeny are governed by the queen bee.
- Queen bee maintains cohesion among the bees in the colony through its pheromones.
- Presence of young queen ensures the normal functioning of the honey beee piony. '
- Queen is the custodian of the male parentage of the colony since only queen, bee is''talrable of laying fertilized eggs which she does using the sperms' reservoir she has in her spermatheca (sperm sac) in her abdomen.
- Absence of the queen bee in the colony, particularly in non breeding (no drone rearing) season, results in the dwindling, laying worker condition and finally in the collapse of the colony.
Thus, queen bee is the most important and indispensable component of a honeybee colony.This single individualin honeybee colony demands special care and handling to keep the colony always in the state of queen-right condition and, thus, to keep the honeybee colony always in the state of its normal working in the larger interest of increasing the growth and productivity of the colony. The handling and
management of queen bee in the colony involve nevertheless important operations for full realization of her potential. A beekeeper has to examine the queen bees several times during the year for several reasons.
