Banana as a off-season apiary for new colonies

Banana as a off-season apiary for new colonies

Malaysian farmers are encouraged lately to cultivate large acreages of bananas for the export market and monocultures of bananas need to be assessed as apiaries (maintenance and production apiaries). Bee colony development in a banana plantation was thus assessed in relation to food sources. As a comparison, colony development in coconut which represents a typical Malaysian farmer's apiary site, was also simultaneously assessed.

Food for honeybees come as copious amounts of nectar and some pollen, although the latter is usually scarce in cultivated varieties. Anthesis occurs during hours of darkness and nectar available to bees in the morning can be reduced by bats, birds and ants.

Hives were inspected at about weekly intervals to estimate the number of cells with eggs, uncapped brood, capped brood, honey and pollen and also the numbers of bees (visual rating) and the addition of new comb (Table 26).

Some important notes from the study are as follows:

1. Mean nectar per flower of 4 cultivars (20 samples):

	QUANTITY		SUGAR CONTENT
Emas	- 1.2 ml.	-	16.5%
Berangan	- 0.7 ml.	-	14.4%
Rastali	- 1.8 ml.	-	14.8%
Embun	- 2.4 ml.	-	18.3%

2. Mean number of banana-hearts in the 4 hectare plantation:

= 461 hearts.

3. Mean number of flowers/banana comb:

Emas	- 19
Berangan	- 15
Rastali	- 10
Embun	- 14

4. Mean number of pollen loads (bee foragers) per minute:

Colony	no	4 - 10
	no.	5 - 22
	no.	6 - 10

5. Mean number of bees visiting a flower per minute:

cultivar Chematu - 3.0 bees

cultivar Mentalon Baling- 2.3 bees

6. Range duration of visit by a bee of each flower - 15 to 90 seconds.

7. Pollen identification:

Pollen identification and photography was done to identify foraged flora. Asystasia, Psidium and Mimosa pollen was identified in the pollen loads. Dissection of the honeycrop produced exclusively banana pollen in the nectar.

The main conclusion drawn is that colony development under banana was as successful as under coconut for small starter colonies at five colonies for 416 banana hearts. They thus can be apiaries for building up nucleus hives and as off-season apiaries.