THE PERIODICITY OF BUILDING HONEY COMBS BY HONEY BEES AND PEST INFESTATION IN TWO APIARIES IN OGUN STATE, SOUTH WESTERN NIGERIA

Abstract

The study examined the periodicity of comb building by Honey bee, Apis mellifera in some hivesin Ogun State and pest of the honey bee in hives for twenty weeks. Four Kenya top bars hives wereeach placed in two apiaries located in University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (UNAAB), Ogun State, Nigeriaand Olupakun village in Abeokuta North Local Government Area, Ogun State, Nigeria. Each of the22 top bars and the flight entrances were smeared with honey as bait to attract bees to the hive. Datawere collected weekly from two colonized hives in each apiary on: number of honey combs built, sizeof newly built honey combs along and across the bars and pest infestation. The results indicated thatthe bees initiated comb building as early as first week after colonization. In the first week, two combsbuilt in hives at UNAAB had mean size of 8.61cm2 and one and half combs built in hives at Olupakunmeasured 1.65 cm2. As at the 20th week, seven and half combs measuring 662.71 cm2 and eightcombs measuring 352.28cm2 were built at UNAAB and Olupakun respectively. Although, higher numbersof combs were built at Olupakun; they were of relatively smaller sizes than combs built in hives atUNAAB. The pests encountered in the hives were greater wax moth (Galleria mellonella), grass hopper(Zonocerus variegatus), termites (Macrotermites nigeriense), Cockroach (Periplanata americana),snakes, Lizard (Agama agama) and Praying mantis (Stanomantis spp.)