THE USE OF RADIOACTIVE PLATINUM-IRIDIUM (IR-192) TAGS FOR LOCATING HONEY BEE QUEENS IN COLONIES (HYMENOPTERA: APIDAE)

Abstract

It is often necessary in queen quality, package bee development, and wintering studies to locate the queen at different times to determine her presence, weight, location, etc. In the spring, colonies are small and locating the queen is not difficult. However, in late summer, when colonies reach up to 60,000 worker bees in five or six supers, the task becomes very difficult and time consuming. While the use of radioactive tags as a means of following the movement of insects has been well established (Amason et al. 1950: Green et al. 1957; Gomez et al. 1962; Baldwin and Cowper 1969), their use for studying the movement of bees has been limited. Radioactive paint was used by G. A. Tomes (1940) and Raudszuz (1958) for marking queens but apparently proved unsuitable. This study was conducted to determine the possibility of using platinum-iridium (IR-192) tags as a means for rapid, repeated recovery of queens during the producing season