The effect of various carbohydrate sources on half-life, biological traits and microbial flora of the bee digestive system

Abstract

The research was conducted in a completely randomized design in 12 treatments and 6 replicates in an incubator on Apis Mellifera Meda, which started from the first half of May 2018 and was carried out until the end of July at the Isfahan Agricultural Research Center. The treatments included white sugar, brown sugar, honey as control and corn liquid fructose, corn starch, wheat starch and potato starch in sweet dough, which was tested in proportion of 15% and 30%. The measured traits consisted of feed intake, half-life, carcass protein and lactobacillus and Coliform content of honey bees’ digestive systems. The results indicated that the treatments showed a significant difference in all traits (p <0.05) and the highest feed intake was related to honey treatment (42.50 g) and the lowest amount of sweet dough containing 30% wheat starch (21.50g), the lowest 50% mortality rate was related to sweet dough (40 days) and the highest mortality rate was related to sweet dough containing 30% corn starch (10 days) .According to the results, sweet dough treatments containing 15% starch in total showed better results than sweet dough treatments containing 30% starch.