A Method of Rearing Diploid Drones in a Honeybee Colony

Abstract

Summary Various modifications of techniques for rearing diploid drone brood were tested on 13 900 low-survival larvae (50% female, 50% diploid drone) from inbred queens. Moderate larval survival was obtained after rearing the larvae in an incubator for varying lengths of time and then transferring them to worker cells, but no adult drones emerged. Satisfactory results were obtained from transferring the diploid larvae to drone cells in a colony after 2–3 days in an incubator, and adult drones emerged in relatively greater numbers than from control groups of normal haploid brood. Artificial rearing, however, tended to have an adverse effect on survival rate, and to avoid this, larvae were reared in queen cells of equivalent age in the colony for two days before transferring them to drone cells as before; this method was also successful. A total of 2286 adult diploid drones were reared in the course of this work, and exact details are given of the techniques recommended.