The study compares honey production in bee colonies with instrumentally inseminated and naturally mated queens. Poland has a special place in the world in terms of the numbers of instrumentally inseminated queens. Our country uses more of them than all other countries taken together. The dense distribution pattern of apiaries in Poland prevents any control over natural mating, while at the same time many bee-keepers who look for valuable breeding material decide to use instrumentally inseminated queens in their honey-making colonies. The cost of purchasing an instrumentally inseminated queen should be compensated by an increased productivity of the colony. The study was aimed at determining whether that was possible. The comparison was carried out at a large professional apiary in the season of 2008. Two comparison groups were created of 12 colonies each. Honey was harvested 3 times during the season. The average production of honey in the group with in-strumentally inseminated queens significantly exceeded average production in that with naturally mated queens.
Virgin queens were introduced into mating nuclei containing workers of different ages. The study verified whether workers younger than 8 days, comprising the younger group, are more suitable for mating nuclei than workers older than 10 days, comprising the older group. In both groups, 7 (35%) queens were lost during mating flights. The time from introduction of queens into mating nuclei to the start of egg laying in mating nuclei with younger and older workers was 13.69 and 13.73 days, respectively. Two queens in mating nuclei with older workers did not start egg laying before the 20th day when the experiment was terminated. No influence of age of workers in mating nuclei on the performance of honeybee queens was found.