engleski

Queen breeder and Vitality test

Croatia has more than 5.000 beekeepers owning more than 320.000 honeybee colonies of carniolan bees Apis mellifera carnica. Since early 90ies in XX century we have started with development of breeding program for honeybees, with one of the goals to protect diversity of locally adapted honeybee populations. The main goals of breeding program were set: 1. Honey yields increase 2. Improvement of honeybee calmness on the combs 3. Decrease of defense behavior 4. Decrease of swarming tendency, and 5. Improvement of tolerance to diseases The selection and breeding work was set at the queen breeder's apiaries. Queen breeders have become familiar with data collection, except for disease tolerance. During last 10 years, practical methods for data collection for varroa tolerance have been changed several times. The first was collection of parasites at bottom boards and calculation of the varroa population development. Later grooming behavior was introduced, as well as pin-test. Few years later, grooming behavior has been rejected, since it was too complex for queen breeders. Current methods for vitality test are similarly non attractive to queen breeders, and they rarely accept to participate. Only two queen breeders currently participate in vitality test, and two more have shown interest to join vitality test. The rest of queen breeders are still waiting for results from these apiaries. Queen breeders as well as regular beekeepers have problem in understanding importance of test as well as procedures for test. Participating queen breeders are not autonomous and strongly depend on practical and theoretical support for these tests.

Apis mellifera carnica; breeding program; selection; Varroa tolerance; queen breeders

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