Abstract:

Objective: The aim of this study was to select Western and Central Black Sea honey bee populations in terms of honey yield, brood production efficiency and overwintering ability and to obtain breeding honey bee material adapted to the Black Sea Region conditions. Materials and Methods: In the study. 200 colonies obtained from different areas of the Western and Central Black Sea Region where nomadic beekeeping is not practiced. from enterprises that are engaged in stationary beekeeping and do not use commercial queens were subjected to selection between 2014-2020. The index values of honey yield. brood production efficiency and overwintering ability of these colonies were calculated and 50 colonies in the 25th percentile were identified and selected. Four queens were produced from each colony subjected to selection. queens were reared every two years and these queens were artificially inseminated with semen collected from other colonies other than their own colonies. Artificially inseminated queen bees were accepted to the colonies and the swarm was completed to 200 again. Thus, the selected colonies were mated by artificial insemination method one year and some performance data were obtained from the mated colonies in the following year. Results: The average brood area indices of the 50 selected colonies in 2015, 2017, 2019 were 3.8±0.08; 3,9±0.05; 4,0±0.08, average overwintering indices were 4,4±0.11; 4,9±0.04; 4,1±0.04, honey yield indices were 3,9±0.09; 3,2±0.05; 3,1±0.09 and colony index values were 12.0±0.12; 12.0±0.09; 11.2±0.14, respectively. The average honey yields of the colonies were 23.68; 24.50, 26.39 kg/colony, overwintering ability(%) were 98.41; 97.15; 81.94 and brood production efficiency were 2064.89; 2123.75; 2023.22 cm2/colony. Conclusion: Selection studies were carried out with Western and Central Black Sea honey bee populations between 2014-2020. It was observed that the third generation of the breeding material made significant progress in terms of honey yield, brood production efficiency and overwintering abilities compared to the initial swarm. As a gene source, it is important to protect this material adapted to the climatic conditions of the Black Sea Region, to ensure sustainable production and to make it available to producers.

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