Natural Therapeutic Nutrition and its Effect on Honey Bee Apis mellifera L. Colonies

Abstract

Honey bees are one of the most important living organisms on earth due to their importance in pollinating various crops that are important to humans, in addition to producing many therapeutic products that are also important for human health.Therefore, it was important to take care of working on providing it with appropriate food to obtain protein, carbohydrates, and the types of vitamins that are important for it especially in dearth period. Here, the three therapeutic natural materials as Thymus vulgaris,Cinnamonum verum and Syzygium aromaticum were used mixed with supplementary diet and syrup sugar solution in the four experimental seasons(autumn, winter, spring and summer).The results reported that the highest amount of consumption was 211.50 ±22.75 g in spring season for supplementary mixed with cinnamon and lowest amount of consumption was 107±10.48 g in summer season for supplementary mixed cloves. The highest number of sealed brood was 1721±191 cell and laid eggs was 2530±348 egg in summer in colonies provided with supplementary mixed with cinnamon. The correlation between the consumption and the producer of sealed brood and laid eggs were 97% and 100% respectively in colonies provided by supplementary mixed with cloves. The highest amount of bee honey were 15.36±1.37 kg/ colony provided with supplementary with cinnamon. There were no diseases in the colonies provided with diet treated with thyme, cinnamon and cloves compared with control colonies untreated. Through this study concluded that the natural therapeutic nutrition was very useful and important to protect colonies from diseases plus increased the colonies production.