LABORATORY REARING STUDIES OF THE POSTCAPPING STAGES OF THE HONEY BEE (APIS MELLIFERA L.): I. REARING BROOD OUTSIDE CELLS

Abstract

Honey bee studies would be facilitated and extended if a reliable method of rearing honey bees in the laboratory were devised. Most failures in development occur in the postcapping stages. Therefore, fully fed larvae or pupae of all three castes were removed from the comb and reared in the laboratory in various ways to ascertain if the precapping or postcapping techniques were at fault. Developmental failure was measured by an arbitrary "scale of success" in which the prepupal and preimaginal ecdyses were scored according to the distance the skin was shed.Routine handling of the postcapping stages with forceps does not appear to affect development, and exposure to room temperatures and humidities is damaging only to drone larvae and pupae. Hindgut intimae should not be removed by hand. Prepupae and pupae, in natural cells, had high ecdysal scores when held at 20–80% R.H. probably because water vapor loss is reduced by the cell cappings. However, outside the natural cell the postcapping stages can best be reared at 80% R.H. and pupae can also be reared at 60%. The best material on which to rear the bees is paper tissue or surgical gauze. Pupae also rear well in wax grooves or on surgical cotton wool. However, when no cell is used, several abnormalities in development occur.