Remote Honey Bee Breeding Center in the Wido Island, the Republic of Korea

INTRODUCTION

Beekeeping has been historically practiced in the Republic of Korea as part of the local food culture, and an activity related to the production of pollinators (Kohsaka et al., 2017). Indeed, the number of native bee colonies is positively linked with the ecological soundness of forest ecosystem management (Park and Youn, 2012). For many years, local bees (Apis cerana koreana) inhabited the natural environment in the mountain-forest areas of the Republic of Korea (Lee et al., 2019). A. c. koreana is incredibly widespread and ecologically successful, as its native range spans all of the Republic of Korea. As everywhere, successful beekeeping is associated with the conservation of the genetic makeup of the queen bee with the target characteristics being the capacity of honey collection or disease resistance. For instance, resistance to the disease “sacbrood virus (SBV)” was employed to breed the new lines of honey bees A. c. koreana (Ilyasov, 2018; Vung et al., 2020). Except for this, success depends on a variety of factors including the place and environment where the hives are located, the amount of food available for the bees, the weather conditions during the pollen and nectar collecting forays as well as the presence and virulence of parasites in and outside the hive (Meyer-Rochow and Jung, 2019). However, selected A. c. koreana honey bees are fast disappearing from beekeepers’ hives and are crossbred throughout Korea. Thus, local honey bees A. c. koreana as to Apis nearctica (Tarpy et al., 2015) have created two groups of colonies: managed colonies living under the supervision of beekeepers in apiaries and feral colonies living on their own in the wild. This complicates the control of the purity of breeding honey bees on apiaries as natural mating with random drones is common. Whereas drones are the result of unfertilized eggs, and only worker bees and queen are the offspring of fertilized eggs, the mating partners of a queen need to be of an equally high genetic quality (Meyer-Rochow and Jung, 2019). One way to make sure that only those drones deemed desirable will mate with selected queen bees is to use artificial insemination (Vung et al., 2020) or natural breeding in the remote island (Meyer-Rochow and Jung, 2019). For this, high quality virgin queen bees together with some foragers of her colony are release two days after a large number of drone bees have been released to an offshore island (remote piece of land) that does not host any bee populations.

Although honey bees are capable of foraging as far as about 12 km from the hive (Eckert, 1933), they rarely forage further away than 6 km and they do not normally like to fly across the water. There are no landmarks apart from the polarization pattern of the sky which honey bees use for orientation (Frisch, 1949; Rossel et al., 1978; Rossel and Wehner, 1986). Losing altitude and flying low in search of some landmarks, the bees tend to crash into the water and drown (Kraft et al., 2011). Therefore, since flights further than 12 km away from the hive are not usually undertaken by honey bees, a distance of about 12 km has to lie between the mainland and the chosen island. The mating place must not be a very windy or rainy and island needs to be of a certain size because if it is too small, honey bees can be died by be blown off by wind to the water (Meyer-Rochow and Jung, 2019). The time of the year for mating trials has to be carefully chosen to coincide with the willingness of the honey bees to engage in nuptial flights while temperature and other weather conditions have to be optimal. Amongst the many islands in Korea (3,215 islands), several islands (Nohwado (노화도), Chodo (초도), Yokjido (욕지도)) (Fig. 1) were used by private bee breeders of A. cerana F for natural mating in Korea.

Here, we report the experience of successful locations like the Wido (위도) island for the controlled mating of A. c. koreana honey bees with selected drone populations from Korea. Also, we share some aspects of the breeding plan for A. c. koreana honey bees.

Fig. 1.

Geographic location of the Wido island.

GEOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CONTROLLED MATING STATION (THE WIDO ISLAND)

The Wido Island is located 14.6 km off the Korean southwestern coastline of Jeonbuk’s Buan-Gun district of Korea (Fig. 1).

It has an area of 11.72 km² and a coastline of 66.0 km long. There are hilly and mountainous areas with an altitude of about 200 m. The average temperature varies from -0.2℃ to 2.5℃ in the months of January and August respectively and an annual precipitation of 1,136 mm (no date). The vegetation of the island is quite diverse and composed of Eurya japonica, Camellia japonica, Prunus sargentii, and Brassica napus in April, Rosa multiflora and Styrax japonicus in May, Actinidia arguta in June, and Sesamum indicum, Platycodon grandiforum, Oenothera biennis, and Humulus japonicus in July (Lee et al., 2013). It is isolated from the nearest coastline by 14.6 km. Lee et al. (2019) reported the results of natural mating sessions on this island at the Apicultural conference in Angdong, South Korea.

Six drone colonies and five mating boxes were placed on the island, Sangwangdeungdo, 0.57 km² large, 31 km away from the Buan-Gun behind Wido in April 30th, while the virgin queens emerged on May, 1st. According to Lee et al. (2019), the number of virgin queens were 20. The mating success recorded from these two islands studied was 66-75% (Lee et al., 2013, 2019).

PLANS FOR THE NATURAL MATING OF APIS CERANA F. HONEY BEES IN THE ISLAND

Drones of A. cerana takes 25 days to emerge into adults from the egg stage while queens take 15 days. It is important to consider that drones should hatch at a time when grafting of queen cells commences (Johnstone, 2008). Hence, the drone population has been carefully selected so that 3-6 days after the queen emerges, a large number of mature drones are present and ready for mating (Table 1).

Table 1.

Counting the resources for breeding in Long and Short plans

The extra amount of drones counted as 20 drones per queen, and excess of drone frame was used for three times. The amount of reared queens depended on breeding plans. It is estimated that sixty queen cells can be used for 20 mating colonies in a long plan while twenty-four queen cells can be reared for 20 mating colonies in a short plan.

Sufficient amount of the resources for breeding was one criterion which influenced the success of natural mating.

The main differences between the Long and Short plans are presented in Table 2. In the long plan, more trips are made to the island and the breeding sessions are longer than in the short plan.

Table 2.

Comparison of Long and Short plans of natural mating of honey bees

The guarantee of the pure breeding of drones did not depends from beekeepers in the Long plan because the combs with drone pupae in droneless queenright colony was moved and drone hatched (emerged) in the island. This additional trip to the island didn’t occur in the Short plan, where the control of pure drone in the colony was provided by the size of drone which couldn’t go out of the hive through the narrow entrance.

REARING OF DRONE BEES

The initial step in preparing to select honey bees for getting drones brood is to select approximately 3-4 strong honey bee colonies. Drones must be unrelated to the virgin queens and drone mother colonies must receive a similar amount of attention as a cell feeder hive. The drone brood was used in the natural comb and into empty comb of Apis mellifera honey bee placed in the drone colonies in advance.

The long plan involved the preparation of host drone colonies before transporting to the island. Preparing the 2 queenright strong host drone colonies means marking the drone brood combs from selected drone colonies. For each mating session, 2 drone colonies were transported to the island 1-3 days before drone emergence (Table 3).

Table 3.

The calendar of dates for breeding drone bees of Apis cerana F. (long plan)

In the short plan, drones from selected queenright drone colonies in the apiary emerges and entrance closed to prevent exit of emerged drones before transporting to mating stations in the island (Table 4). In order to keep pure drones from random drones, we selected and mounted a super colony with drone brood in the first floor and destroyed existing drones. The newly marked drone combs were inserted into the first floor with entrance reduced to prevent influx of random drones. The frames were fixed in the colonies with entrance closed and transported to the island the following day.

Table 4.

The calendar of dates for breeding drone bees of Apis cerana F. (short plan)

REARING OF QUEEN BEES

Rearing a sufficient number of queen bees is the first step in preparing to select specific individuals for any controlled mating experiment (Delaney et al., 2011). The Standard method for rearing and selection of A. mellifera queens (Büchler et al., 2013) was adapted for rearing Apis cerana queen bees. The required larvae came from colonies known for their superior qualities with regard to high honey or royal jelly production, resistance to parasites and disease, and willingness to delay swarm formation. The host colony needed to rear the queen larvae has to be a healthy colony, strong-brood colony, and without any swarm-formation condition (Meyer-Rochow and Jung, 2019). These rules are suitable for both Apis mellifera, and Apis cerana honey bees. However, to transfer the queen larvae of Apis cerana, the latter must have not been older than 1 day. This was reported by Meyer-Rochow and Jung (2019) where the age of Apis mellifera larvae was recommended not more than 1.5 days. The size of A. cerana queen cells used for grafting was less than that of A. mellifera queen cells. Also, the number of queen cells on the A. cerana queen-cell frame (rearing frame) was about 18-20 as compared to a minimum of 30 queen cells with A. mellifera. The A. cerana honey bee queen breeding procedures in the host of two-floor queenright colony were used successfully (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.

The host queenright colony of A. cerana honey bees for queen rearing. A - Queen excluder between first and second floor to keep the queen in the first floor; B - The components of second-floor host colony with rearing frame (Queen cell frame); C - The components of a nuclei hive, same as components of the second floor; D - The host two-floor colony and a rearing frame.

After grafting, the cells can be expected to release virgin queen bees within 11-12 days and 12-13 days for A. cerana and A. mellifera respectively. The next steps were different depending on the long or short breeding plan.

Long plan means to rear the queen in the island. We grafted very young larvae (first instars or 1 day old larvae) in the island and apiary on the same day drone’ colonies were transported to the island (Table 5).

Table 5.

The calendar of dates for breeding queen bees of Apis cerana F. (long plan)

Short plan means to transport the 0-2-day virgin queens with 10 nurse honey bees and sugar cake in cages to the island (Table 6). Other case had differed only one: 11-12 days grafted queen cells are put in cages directly instead of queen. These cages were successfully transported to the island in the paper box overnight.

Table 6.

The calendar of dates for breeding queen bees of Apis cerana F. (short plan)

Mating colonies, queen-cell frame (long plan), or cages with queen and worker bee (short plan) were transported to the island at the same time. The colonies were placed on land and entrance opened after 20 min while honey bees had their orientation flight an hour later. Secondly, for the long plan, 2-3 queen cells were attached on brood combs in every colony in the island. The short plan involves queen cages with worker bees placed on frames in queenless mating colonies and opened 2-3 hours later. When this was done, the acceptance of the virgin queen was carefully checked following the behavior of the worker honey bees.

PREPARATION AND TRANSPORTION OF MATING HIVES TO AND FROM THE ISLAND

In order to transport the mating hives to the island, two-frame boxes consisting of the brood comb, food comb and a feeder were preferred and used.

A day before the transportation of mating hives to the island, small mating colonies were established with entrance closed. Each mating hive include the following: 1 honey comb placed near the wall, 1 capping brood comb, a feeder, and worker bees without drones and queen bees. All these components were fixed with staplers on the walls of the hive. The honey bee colonies were transferred to the island by car and ship for a 4 hours. Entrances of mating hives are opened only a few minutes when placed in the island for mating. The queen in cages (short schedule) or 2-3 queen cells (long schedule) were inserted into the mating hives an hour after placing the hives in the island (Table 3). Mating success was evaluated from the number of mating hives with eggs and queen present, and the presence of young broods. Mated and unmated colonies were transported back to the mainland apiary after the required breeding period (47-50 days) by car and ship. The island was therefore cleaned for by destroying aged drones while giving room for the next mating session.

MATING CONTROL

According to literature, a few days after cessation of the nuptial flights, successfully mated queen bees start laying eggs and establish their brood nest (Johnstone, 2008). The beekeeper can check whether the broods consist of normal workers, mainly if the cells are fully covered. Mating boxes are taken back to the apiary when the presence of fertilized eggs and workers’ brood is noticed (Meyer-Rochow and Jung, 2019). If mating is not successful after three weeks, it is needless to wait for the queen to lay eggs. For example, in one summer session in Wido, 30 queen cells of A. c. koreana, 25 cages with queens and honey bees (A. c. koreana), and six drone populations of around 9,000 drones were taken by ship to the island for mating.

The mating hives are returned to the mainland no later than 3 weeks after a long schedule and 2 weeks after a short mating schedule of mating. This duration was lower (3.5 weeks) for the A. mellifera honey bee mating schedule, reported by Meyer-Rochow and Jung (2019). The week without honey bees was scheduled between mating sessions to clean the island environment from aging drones. We registered a mating success of 79% per mating session, which suggests the vitality of the drones involved was excellent (Table 7).

Table 7.

Successfulness of natural mating in the island 2021, the first year

Due to the climatic condition of the Wido island, no mating plan was scheduled for the month of July (Month with heavy rain). Mating cycles were preferred in the months of May, early June, August and early September.

CONCLUSION

Successful beekeeping is associated with the conservation of the genetic makeup of the queen bee with the target characteristics being the capacity of honey collection, and disease resistance, especially SBV in Apis cerana koreana honey bees. For the conservation and improvement of the genetic diversity of honey bees, remote isolated mating locations play vital roles for their controlled mating. This article reports on the Wido Island as a remote station to conduct controlled mating to produce honey bee queens with desired characters without genetic contamination or cross mating. The processes for queen and drone production as well as the movement from the main apiaries to the mating stations are well detailed. This information can be vitally important to help design and manage the new controlled mating center on the remote islands because other countries and Korea have islands which have been used by some private beekeepers as mating stations for breeding A. cerana and A. mellifera honey bees.

Acknowledgments

We gratefully thank the bee breeding laboratory, National Institute of Agricultural Science (NIAS), Rural Development Administration (RDA), Korea Africa Food and Agricultural Cooperation Initiative (KAFACI) Secretariat, and Institute of Agricultural Research for Development (IRAD) for their collaboration towards the success of this project. This study was supported by a research project (grant number PJ01418002) from the National Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea.

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