Increased Mass-Rearing of Queens in High Royal-Jelly-Producing Honey Bee Colonies (<i>Apis mellifera ligustica</i>) Generates Smaller Queens with Comparable Fecundity

The mass rearing of high-quality queen bees is an essential beekeeping practice for producing new queens to maintain colony productivity. A strain of high royal-jelly-producing bees (RJBs; Apis mellifera ligustica) in China exhibits high potential for the rapid mass rearing of queens. To explore the potential changes in the quality of mass-reared queens, a set of morphometric traits and the sealed brood area were compared between the queens reared from 64 and 320 queen cells in RJB colonies. The increase in the queen cell number was found to induce a slightly but significantly reduced body weight and smaller wing length and thorax width in the reared queens at emergence. However, the ovariole number and sealed brood area, an indicator of the queen fecundity, were not observed to be significantly influenced. With respect to body weight and ovariole number, all the reared queens satisfied the current criteria for high-quality queens. Our findings provide evidence for the efficient mass production of high-quality queens using RJB colonies

Solid-State Synthesis and Photocatalytic Activity of Polyterthiophene Derivatives/TiO2 Nanocomposites

Poly(3,4-propylenedioxy-2,2':5',2"-terthiophene)/TiO2 and poly(3,4-(2,2-dimethylenepropylenedioxy)-2,2':5',2"-terthiophene)/TiO2 nanocomposites were synthesized by a simple solid-state method. Additionally, the poly(3,4-propylenedioxy thiophene)/TiO2 and poly(3,4-2,2-dimethylenepropylenedioxythiophene)/TiO2 nanocomposites were synthesized in a similar manner for comparison. The structure and morphology were characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) absorption spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The photocatalytic activities of the nanocomposites were examined through the degradation processes of a methylene blue (MB) solution under UV light and sunlight irradiation. The results of FTIR and UV-Vis spectra showed that the composites were successfully synthesized by solid-state method and the poly(3,4-propylenedioxy-2,2':5',2"-terthiophene)/TiO2 and poly(3,4-(2,2-dimethylenepropylenedioxy)-2,2':5',2"-terthiophene)/TiO2 nanocomposite had a higher oxidation degree and conjugation length than others. The results also indicated that the TiO2 had no effect on the crystallinity of composites, but was well embedded in the polymer matrix. Additionally, the highest degradation efficiency of 90.5% occurred in the case of the poly(3,4-propylenedioxy-2,2':5',2"-terthiophene)/TiO2 nanocomposite