Selection for the genetic improvement of Apis honey bees

Abstract

Since the introduction to our country in the 80’s of the African bee there was a cross between Italian and African bees causing what was called “Africanization”. The Africanized bee, due to its characteristics, has dominance in the aspects of defensiveness, habit of cleaning and production. The Italian bee is characterized by its meekness. These characteristics have caused that many people who were dedicated to this activity abandon it and therefore it is not very common the increase of new producers. The objective of the qualitative study is to select bees that have dominance in the following characteristics: a) meekness, b) production and c) hygienic habit. Of 25 beekeepers who agreed to collaborate with the trial, 60 hives were sampled to choose the 20 that best present the characteristics already indicated, in order to form a batch of breeding hives to obtain fecundated queens, 10 destined for the maternal line and 10 for the paternal line. The results obtained indicated that the average honey production was 31.75 kg / hive, the defensiveness index was not very docile (no sting only fly around the hive) and the percentage of hygienic habit was 85% which shows Hives free of foreign agents inside. The hives destined for paternal line or drones production inherits the characteristic of meekness, and the hives of maternal line or production of queens inherits the productivity and hygienic habit.