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

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

Evaluation of nutritional effects of different levels of enzymatic fructose and sugar syrup on the half life and bacterial flora of the bee digestive system

The authors gratefully acknowledge Islamic Azad University of Khorasgan Branch to collaborate on the implementation of the project and the Knowledge Base of the Fanavaran Spadana Foundation in supplement for financial support.The research was carried out in a completely randomized design with 6 treatments and 6 replications in the bee incubator (Apis Mellifera Meda) from the second half of May 2019 till the end of July 2018 in Isfahan Agricultural and Natural Resources Research Center. In order to evaluate the nutritional effects of different levels of enzymatic fructose (0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50%) and sugar (50, 40, 30, 20, 10 and 0%) on the longevity and bacterial flora of the bee digestive system, mean comparison between experimental treatments showed that the lowest longevity and half-life between experimental levels was related to treatment with 50% fructose (P <0.05). The longevity of control treatment and treatments with 10% fructose were significant at 38.8 and 32.2 days, respectively, and the lowest feed intake was also observed at 50% fructose (P <0.05). Maximum and minimum Lactobacillus bacteria population in the bee digestive system inside cage were 10% fructose with 8.30(log CFU/g) and 50% fructose, respectively. The bacterial population of coliforms in the digestive system of bees inside the cage was the lowest with 10% fructose and the highest with 50% fructose (P <0.05)