Improving honey production in worker bees (Apis mellifera adansoni L.) hymenoptera: apidae through artificial modification of their feeding activities.

Modification of feeding activity, nursing care and undertaker behaviour were carried out among some colonies of honey bees Apis mellifera adansoni L to know the effect on honey production. Apiaries Numbers 1, 2 and 3 contain three replicates of experimental hives while apiary Number 4 contains control hives. All the hives were baited with honey to attract bees. In Apiary No. 1 (Hives A1, A2 and A3) the bee colonies were fed with banana paste which contains amino acid dopamine. The foragers population count was 9324 ± 256 ( χ ± s.e.) and the honey producedweighed 16.24 ± 0.71 kg (χ ± s.e.).In Apiary No.2 (Hives B1, B2 and B3), some young nursing care worker bees were removed from the bee colonies, thus making the old foraging worker bees to perform nursing care duty. The foragers population count was 6714 ± 256 ( χ ± s.e.) while honey produced weighed 6.03 ± 0.71 kg ( χ ± s.e). Dead bodies of insects and dirt were introduced into the hives in Apiary No.3 (HivesC1, C2 and C3) to induce undertaker behaviour in the colony. Some of the old foraging worker bees assumed undertaker duty in these hives where the population count of the foraging workers was 5466 ±256 (χ ± s.e.) and the honey yield weighed 7.02 ± 0.71 kg ( χ ± s.e.). In the control Apiary (Hives D1, D2 and D3), where the bee colonies were baited with honey only, foraging worker bees population count was 8670 ± 256 (χ ± s.e.) and honey produced weighed 13.13 ± 0.71 kg ( χ ± s.e.). The differences between the mean foraging worker bees’ population and consequently honey yield in the different treatments were statistically significant with the apiary where banana paste was introduced containing the highest. When pollen and nectar is abundant, the number of foraging worker bees determines the honey yield. Feeding of the beecolonies with banana paste slightly increased the population growth of the foraging worker bees and the honey yield

Challenges associated with the honey bee (Apis Mellifera Adansonii) colonies establishment in South Western Nigeria

The southwestern part of Nigeria is a tropical rainforest region having many local beekeepers. These beekeepers have experienced decline in colony establishment in the recent past. A study carried out in Lagos, Ogun and Osun states between December 2009 and September 2011 examined 14 randomly selected commercial bee farms for problems associated with decline in colony establishment. Sampling and treatments were split equally between each apiary and three colonies were selected in each. All the colonies were housed in Tanzania/local top bar hives. There were 58.34, 44.84 and 40.61 average percentage declines in colony establishment in Lagos, Ogun and Osun States, respectively. Presence of pests and diseases, pesticide poisoning, poor hive and seasonal management, ecological problem and lack of queen rearing were potential problems identified by the beekeepers. All the apiaries had pests like Crickets, Ants (Companotus pennsylvanicus), Small Hive beetle (Aethina tumida), Termites (Macrotermes spp) and Spider (Lactrodectus mactan). Varroa mite infestations were found in 33 (78.57%) of apiaries sampled. There was no significant difference between the levels of Varroa infestation in all the colonies during the dry and wet seasons at confidence interval of 95 percent (t = 1.542, df = 13, p = 0.147 (p> 0.05). Nosema spores were found in 27 (64.29%) colonies examined. The number of spores range from 16 x 103 to 30.4 x 103. There were no significant differences in the infection from colony to colony, apiary to apiary and between dry and wet seasons (t = - 0.094 df = 11, P = 0.927 (P > 0.05). Diseases like American and European foulbrood were absent while chalkbrood disease was prevalent. Environmental factors of high temperature, high rainfall and high relative and hive humidity enhanced the spread of pests and disease pathogens. Many insecticides were constantly applied by the farmers on the crops in the surrounding farmland. Two of the commonly used insecticides DDVP (Dichlorvos) and Cyperforce (Cypermetrin) were discovered to have increased mortality on worker honey bees with progressively larger doses. It was obvious that insecticide toxicity had a significant effect on the colony. Hence, ecological and management problems had contributed to the decline in colony establishment in this area.Keywords: colony, decline, varroasis, infestation, toxicityAfrican Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development, Volume 13 No. 2 April 201

Large area chemical vapour deposition grown transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers automatically characterized through photoluminescence imaging

Chemical vapour deposition (CVD) growth is capable of producing multiple single-crystal islands of atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) over large areas. Subsequent merging of perfectly epitaxial domains can lead to single-crystal monolayer sheets, a step towards scalable production of high quality TMDs. For CVD growth to be effectively harnessed for such production it is necessary to be able to rapidly assess the quality of material across entire large area substrates. To date, characterisation has been limited to sub-0.1-mm2 areas, where the properties measured are not necessarily representative of an entire sample. Here, we apply photoluminescence (PL) imaging and computer vision techniques to create an automated analysis for large area samples of monolayer TMDs, measuring the properties of island size, density of islands, relative PL intensity and homogeneity, and orientation of triangular domains. The analysis is applied to ×20 magnification optical microscopy images that completely map samples of WSe2 on hBN, 5.0 mm × 5.0 mm in size, and MoSe2–WS2 on SiO2/Si, 11.2 mm × 5.8 mm in size. Two prevailing orientations of epitaxial growth were observed in WSe2 grown on hBN and four predominant orientations were observed in MoSe2, initially grown on c-plane sapphire. The proposed analysis will greatly reduce the time needed to study freshly synthesised material over large area substrates and provide feedback to optimise growth conditions, advancing techniques to produce high quality TMD monolayer sheets for commercial applications