Effect of Probiotic Feed Additives on Honeybee Colonies Overwintering
- 1 Bashkir State Agrarian University, Russia
Abstract
The paper presents the study on the effect of two types of probiotic feed additives of different composition on the quality of honeybee colonies during wintering. Feed additive called SpasiPchel contains 2 strains of bacteria Bacillus subtilis anfeed additive PcheloNormosil contains Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium strains and arabinogalactan (prebiotic isolated from Siberian larch needles). If honeybees received Spasipchel and Pchelonormosil during the feeding in cages their lifespan increased. Honeybee colonies that received Spasipchel in autumn exceeded the control group by 21.3% in colony strength and by 58.7% in the number of sealed brood in spring. Food consumption in these colonies per honeybee frame during the winter period was 22% lower. Honeybee colonies, that received PcheloNormosil feed additive, were slightly behind in strength compared to the control colony during spring, but surpassed it by 23.5% in the number of sealed brood. Further research should be made to identify optimal composition of probiotics that are better at preserving honeybee colonies under the conditions of the continental climate characterized by long cold winters.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3844/ajavsp.2020.284.290
Copyright: © 2020 Galina Mishukovskaya, Marat Giniyatullin, Varis Tuktarov, Airat Khabirov, Fail Khaziahmetov and Aygul Naurazbaeva. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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Keywords
- Honeybees
- Honeybee Colonies Overwintering
- Probiotics
- Honeybee Colony Strength
- Sealed Brood
- Feed Consumption