JP3421121B2 - How to rear bumblebees - Google Patents

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to a method for breeding bumblebees. More specifically, the present invention aims to generate pollen-mediated colonies in a short period of time. It relates to a method for improving the nesting rate, shortening the emergence of worker bees, promoting nest development, and breaking dormancy of new queen bees by attaching worker bees (adults, larvae, pupae) as helpers.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Honeybees, bees, bees, and zebra flies are known as insects used as pollinators.
Among these, the only social insects living in a family consisting of one queen bee and a large number of worker bees are bees, and bumblebees intended by the present invention are also included in this.

Conventionally, honey bees have been utilized as pollinators for various agricultural products with the development of beekeeping industry. However, honeybees cannot be expected to have sufficient pollination activity in a greenhouse covered with a film that removes ultraviolet rays. In addition, it has been pointed out that it does not visit flowers that do not produce nectar such as tomatoes, and that it cannot be raised in a narrow enclosed space. Bumblebees, which have a lifestyle different from that of honeybees, have solved the problem of pollen transmission in these institutional horticulture. The technology for utilizing bumblebees began to become concrete in 1987, when Roland de Jong, Belgium was used.
It begins with he recognizing an outstanding effect of pollination of greenhouse bumblebees (Bombus terrestris), which is not distributed in Japan, on pollination of greenhouse tomatoes. After that, within 4 to 5 years, the production and sale of this bee has spread to Europe, mainly in the Netherlands, England and France. 19 in Japan
In 1991, Biobest was first imported from Belgium, the Bombus terrestris, and in 1992 the same species were imported from Copperto and the Netherlands and introduced into the tomato house. The total import volume to date is expected to exceed 10,000 groups. In the past, the introduction of this European bumblebee to the production of tomatoes, which had been parthenotropically processed by humans one-by-one manually by hormone treatment, achieved results in the form of drastic labor reduction and fruit quality improvement through normal pollination. There is. From the viewpoint of production agriculture, the introduction is really effective.
However, if the alien species escapes to the field and is naturalized, there is concern about competition with 14 Japanese bumblebees native to Japan, or the effects on Japan's fauna and flora widely. The source of the present invention lies in the idea that the problem can be avoided by using native bumblebees.

[0004] With regard to breeding methods that have been developed in Europe, two queen bees are placed in one birdhouse at the same time to start breeding in the European bumblebee (Duchateau. 1991). There is a report (van den Eijnde et al., 1991) that the rate of nesting increases when four worker bees are attached.

An outline of the life history of bumblebees will be described. Bumblebee nesting is initiated by a queen bee that appears in the soil in spring after winter. The queen bee makes a nest in a nest such as a mouse and lays and raises several fertilized eggs that will become worker bees. This group of worker bees first raised by one queen bee is called the 1st brood. These worker bees helped the mother's queen bee, and were responsible for labor such as expanding the nest, collecting food, and defending the nest, so that the queen bee could concentrate on spawning, and at this point it would be exactly the "queen bee". . Therefore, raising the first bleed as soon as possible is important for future nest development. The number one worker bee grows exponentially as more worker bees raise more queen bee children. From the end of August to September, dozens of new queen bees, which will become queen bees the next year, will be raised. The new queen bee leaves the nest, mates with staves in other nests, dives into the soil, and after a long winter, begins nesting again in the spring of the following year.

[0006]

The nesting of bumblebees in nature begins with only one queen bee.
The queen bee secretes wax from its body to create a small spawning chamber, which produces several fertilized eggs. From this egg until the birth of a worker bee, the queen bee has to do all the work alone. Therefore, the queen bee is heavily burdened and the mortality rate is high during this period. In addition, it takes a long time from the spawning until the first worker bee becomes an adult. It is difficult to start nesting with one queen bee indoors. The present inventor attaches a queen bee of the Japanese giant bumblebee to a worker bee of the European giant bumblebee, and makes it a social condition from the beginning, thereby increasing the nesting success rate and increasing the number of worker bees in a short period of time. The objective was to complete an efficient large-scale indoor breeding method for bumblebees. Next, in the natural world, a new queen bee that has entered the winter after mating will be treated in the same way, the dormancy will be omitted, and the development of a method to secure colonies in the laboratory throughout the year is also aimed. By applying this method to the propagation of Japanese bumblebees, it is intended to efficiently propagate even Japanese native bumblebees that have no risk of adversely affecting the Japanese ecosystem and contribute to the increase in production of agricultural products. Is.

[0007]

[Means for Solving the Problems] The present inventor was able to promote nesting and break dormancy of a new queen bee by putting a test insect in a breeding box and attaching several helpers to one queen bee. . That is, the first brood grows faster when a helper is added to a queen bee, and when a helper is added to a new queen bee that has been mated, it stops long sleep and immediately starts nesting. You can secure nests all year round. When not only adults but also larvae and pupae are attached as worker bees, worker bees that serve as helpers emerge one after another, which is advantageous in that the effect lasts longer than when adults are attached. It is also possible to use eggs, but in that case it is desirable to use them in combination with larvae.

[0008]

INDUSTRIAL APPLICABILITY The present invention paves the way for large-scale proliferation of Japanese bumblebees in the laboratory, which has been almost impossible until now, and the bumblebees are planned in Japan in response to the increasing demand for bumblebees in the future. It is epoch-making in that it can be produced in a general way.

Example 1 Acquisition of Queen Bee and Worker Bee The queen bee of a giant bumblebee visiting a flower after wintering was collected in Oshino Village, Minamitsuru District, Yamanashi Prefecture. Each queen bee was placed in a small plastic case one by one and fed with about 30% sucrose water until the start of breeding. The worker bee that was added to the queen bee as a helper was a European bumblebee (trade name: Natchupol), which was prepared by Coppert in the Netherlands and imported by Tomen Corporation.

Example 2 Rearing Conditions Queen bees collected outdoors were introduced into a rearing box (length 80 × width 150 × height 65 mm). The breeding box is divided into a nursery room and a feeding room by a partition plate with holes for passage. It has a transparent plastic lid with air holes, but it is designed to be dark on the nursery side. A thin board is laid on the bottom of the nursery, and when the nest built on it develops, it is easy to transfer it to a larger nest box. 30% sucrose was placed in a small container and placed on the floor of the feeding room, and fresh pollen collected from the bee colony by the pollen trap was placed on the floor of the nursery room in a dumpling shape with a diameter of about 5 mm (Fig. 1). ). These two types of baits are
It was added or replaced depending on the daily situation. The breeding box was placed in an incubator maintained at about 25 ° C., and the photoperiod conditions were 12 hours light period and 12 hours dark period. The breeding conditions for the ward (Fig. 2) in which one queen bee and three bees working as helpers are also the same.

Example 3 Nest Development Rate One queen bee placed in a breeding box secreted wax from the abdomen about 1 week later and started nesting. Create a honey pot and spawning room,
Six to nine fertilized eggs were laid together. After the spawning, the queen bee immediately closed the spawning room with wax, generated heat to hold it from above, and maintained the temperature in the spawning room at about 32 ° C. After hatching the eggs, pollen consumption gradually increased, and the queen bee exhaled the pollen it fed and gave it to the larvae. As the larvae grew and reached the end, pollen consumption increased rapidly. It took about a month from the spawning to the emergence of the first worker bee. After the emergence of worker bees, the colony developed rapidly as they shared most of the work. On the other hand, in the queen bee given three worker bees as helpers, the helpers share the work in the colony and help the queen bees from the beginning, which not only increases the nesting success rate but also significantly promotes nest development (Fig. 2). That is, the number of days required for the first emergence of worker bees is shortened, the spawning interval of queen bees is shortened, and 50 days from the start of spawning.
The total number of workers on the day was about twice as high as when the queen bee was started alone (Table 1 and Fig. 4). Table 1. Comparison of early stage colony development in the queen bee lone nesting plot with three helpers in the bumblebee ────────────────────────── ────────── Elapsed days since the start of the experiment Queen bee spawning colonies ──────────────────────── 50 days from the start Eye number Start nesting Start laying eggs Cumulative worker bee number of first blued worker ─────── Queen bee alone nesting ward (n = 4) H-1 5 7 30 (8) 14 H-4 12 14 37 (4) 4 One queen bee with helper (n = 3) H-5 9 14 24 (5) 17 H-6 9 12 27 (6) 21 H-7 3 7 27 (7) 28 ─────────────── ────────────────────

Example 4 A new queen bee has succeeded in mating under experimental conditions with a new queen bee and a male bee that emerged from a colony grown in a nesting room with the new queen bee, but the new queen bee enters dormancy for several months after mating. Therefore, it was impossible to continue nesting. The present inventor succeeded in breaking dormancy by attaching a worker bee to the mated new queen bee (FIG. 5).

[Brief description of drawings]

[Figure 1] Nest box used for indoor breeding of bumblebees

[Fig.2] Queen bee of the giant bumblebee (large individual in the center)
And 3 worker bees helpers of Bombus terrestris

[Fig. 3] Differences in colony development between a group in which only one queen bee of the bumblebee was nested (A) and a group in which one queen bee was used as a helper and three bees were added (B).

[Fig. 4] Difference in cumulative emerged number of worker bees between a group (H-1) in which only one queen bee of the giant bumblebee was nested and a group (H-7) in which one queen bee was used as a helper (H-7)

[Fig. 5] A new queen bee copulated by a bumblebee that has been diapaused by attaching a worker bee helper to the bumblebee.

─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuation of the front page (56) References J. van den Eijnde et al. , Acta Horiculturae, vol. 288, pp. 154-158 (1991) (58) Fields surveyed (Int.Cl. ⁷ , DB name) A01K 67/033 502 JISST file (JOIS)

Claims (4)

(57) [Claims] 1. A method for rearing bumblebees, which comprises adding a queen bee of a bumblebee to a worker bee of the Bombus terrestris as a helper. 2. The method according to claim 1, wherein 1 to several tens of worker bees are provided for each queen bee. 3. The worker bee is an adult, a larva or a pupa,
The method according to claim 1 or 2. 4. The method according to claim 1, wherein the queen bee is a mating new queen bee.