Honey Bee Performance under Different Vegetation and Land Use Types and Conditions

الملخص

The location of bee hives plays an important role in the success and profit maximization of honeybee production business. This study was carried out to evaluate the performance of bees in different locations characterized as hill tops, residential areas with limited vegetation, farmland and thick forest in Osun and Ondo States, South-western Nigeria. Fifteen bee hives were randomly placed approximately 50 m apart at each location and monitored during the wet (May-September 2017) and dry (November-March 2018) seasons. The total harvest of colonies was carried out in all the hives at the end of the study period. The results show that hives located on hill tops and residential areas had the highest colonization efficiency of over 60% while the forest location gave poor in hive colonization (<20%). FUTA 1, Oke-isimi and Ilara as residential area, hill top and farmland had significantly (P < 0.05) higher average wax production at 11.65 ± 0.14, 11.74 ± 1.5 and 10.62 ± 2.0 kg and average honey at 7.8 ± 0.09, 6.97 ± 0.93 and 5.77 ± 1.09 l respectively. The production of honey wax and honey showed positive and significant correlation with bee hives colonization (r= 0.945, 0.948 respectively). The number of pests discovered at the bee hive sites determined, to some extent, the performance of the bee colonies. Soldier ants, termites and mites were recorded in almost all the colonies especially where the performance was poor. In order to derive maximum profit from honeybee production, adequate attention must be given to the location of hives in terms of availability of highly diverse flowering plants, absence or low population of bee pests, most especially, soldier ants, termites and small hive beetle.