| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,600,000)
Fiscal Year 2001: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
Fiscal Year 2000: ¥900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000)
Fiscal Year 1999: ¥2,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,000,000)
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| Research Abstract |
Japanese native honeybee, Apis cerana japonica has apicultural merits like gentleness, higher tolerance to diseases, higher resistance to natural enemies, active foraging in cold temperature, etc., which are not seen in introduced European species. On the other hands, it has demerits like hyper sensitiveness during inspecting, higher swarming and absconding nature, and lower honey-gathering capability. Thus we have tried to select the lines better for apicultural purposes.
1.From the colonies sampled from various localities all over the Japan, lines were selected with reference to higher fecundity of queen, lower absconding, not showing hyper sensitivity against stimuli given to the comb. Crosses were made by artificial insemination, or by the control of mating time with shifted LD regimes using specially designed hives. Number of selected colonies were 3 out of 15 in the first, 5 out of 22 in the second, and 7 out of 15 in the third year.
2.In the selected lines, heavier hive weight and higher comb-building activity were detected. Latent time to begin marching on the comb was lengthened from 15-30 s in control to more than 90s in the selected ones. This might give great merit for the ease of inspection or handling, and for hive translocation.
3.Pollinating ability for strawberry and blueberry was also compared between the selected and unselected lines of A. cerana in green house and netted house. Selected line was more active under various weather conditions. There no significant were differences in the weight of fruit set and number of seeds, but the difference was significant against the open-pollinated control trees. A. cerana was more active under cloudy, low ambient temperature, low light intensity conditions than to commercial A. mellifera.
These results reveal the effectiveness of selective breeding for the development of useful lines or strains at least for pollination purposes.
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