Bee Studies 2016, Vol 8, Num, 1     (Pages: 015-021)

HONEY BEE'S (Apis mellifera L.) LEVELS OF UTILIZATION OF KIWIFRUIT POLLENS

Ahmet KUVANCI 1 ,Ahmet GÜLER 2 ,Fevzi AKSOY 1 ,Yaşar KARAOĞLAN 1

1 Arıcılık Araştırma Enstitüsü Müdürlüğü, Ordu, Türkiye
2 Ondokuzmayıs Üniversitesi Ziraat Fakültesi Zootekni Bölümü, Samsun, Türkiye
Viewed : 1568 - Downloaded : 843 This study was carried out in three different Harvard variety kiwi horticultural fields which have similar features in Efirli village of Perşembe, Ordu province, Black Sea Region. In each garden, 3 of the kiwi fruit plant fields were released free to honey bees entrance and other 3 of them were taken into a cage to prevent the entrance of honey bees and closed with a net with 3.8 mm x 3.8 mm pores 3 days before flowering. Before the flowering period, 5 beehives were brought to each of the gardens. During the flowering period each plant was observed for honey bees and other insects visiting on 5 flowers simultaneously in 10 minutes. It was observed that the honey bees visited the plant on an average of 5.63 visits over 5 flowers during the 12 day flowering period and it was also observed that the insects not morphologically equal to or larger than honey bees did not visit. During the full flowering period in the plants, the number of flowers on the trees was determined as an average of 775.51 flowers / tree. During the flowering of the plant, pollen traps were attached daily to the hives and daily pollen counts were made. A total of 33.55 kiwi pollen pellets were identified in 200 randomly selected pollen grains collected from the traps. 98.92% of the flowers were turn into fruit in the trees polinated by the honey bees, whereas only 32.08% of the flowers were turned into fruit in trees closed to honey bee entrance. Honey bees enhanced yield and quality due to effective pollination and kiwi plant is a very good source of pollen for Honey bees. Keywords : Honey bee, Apis mellifera, kiwifruit, pollination, pollen, polen trap