The Ministry of Agriculture has bred a disease-resistant, high-production strain of bees and made the strain and breeding method available to the private sector, promoting the sustainable development of the beekeeping industry.
The Miaoli District Agricultural Research and Extension Station has been researching bee strains for five years, aiming to address declining honey yields due to weakened strains and pests.
The station introduced its new breakthrough bee strain at a news conference at the ministry in Taipei yesterday.
Photo: Yang Yuan-ting, Taipei Times
Domestic bee colonies primarily rely on beekeepers to help them reproduce within their own colony, but inbreeding has gradually weakened strains, station director Lu Hsiu-ying (呂秀英) said.
Coupled with the increasing difficulty of pest and disease control amid climate change, honey production has declined, Lu said.
After five generations of hybridization, the station bred a new disease-resistant, high-production strain of bees, helping the beekeeping industry to improve bee genetics and overcome the effects of climate change, she said.
To develop the strain, researchers bred bees that were good at keeping hives clean with bees that were strong honey gatherers, said Wu Tzu-hsien (吳姿嫻), director of the station’s beekeeping division.
After five generations of careful selection and crossbreeding, they produced a strain that combines both traits, Wu said.
Bees that tend toward cleanliness regularly clear out waste and dead bees, which makes the hive healthier and more resistant to diseases, she said.
To measure hygienic behavior, the station used liquid nitrogen to freeze bee pupae in the hive, then checked 24 hours later to see how much had been cleaned out, Wu said.
It also marked larvae and introduced a disease that affects them, then checked their survival rate to assess a colony’s disease resistance, she said.
The station measured the honey harvested during the longan flowering period to breed strains with high honey production, she added.
It put colonies close to longan trees then measured the weight of honeycombs before and after spinning out the honey to calculate the amount collected, she said.
The new strain of bees showed a hygienic ability of 90 percent, up from 70 percent, a 40 percent improvement in larvae survival and a 30 percent improvement in honey production, Wu said.
The station’s techniques are available under a nonexclusive license, so beekeepers can use it freely to improve their own breeding skills, helping to improve domestic bee quality and honey production, Lu said.
The station would use the technique to develop breeding farms and provide high-quality bees for beekeepers, helping the industry to face modern challenges and grow sustainably, she said.
The fee for the bee breeding technology is NT$130,000 and it is available to individuals, companies and other organizations, the station said.
The package includes 30 specially selected queen bees, six frames of carefully bred bee brood and a guide to the hybrid trait preservation technique, it said.
The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
Two Taiwanese prosecutors were questioned by Chinese security personnel at their hotel during a trip to China’s Henan Province this month, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. The officers had personal information on the prosecutors, including “when they were assigned to their posts, their work locations and job titles,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said. On top of asking about their agencies and positions, the officers also questioned the prosecutors about the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement, a pact that serves as the framework for Taiwan-China cooperation on combating crime and providing judicial assistance, Liang
A group from the Taiwanese Designers in Australia association yesterday represented Taiwan at the Midsumma Pride March in Melbourne. The march, held in the St. Kilda suburb, is the city’s largest LGBTQIA+ parade and the flagship event of the annual Midsumma Festival. It attracted more than 45,000 spectators who supported the 400 groups and 10,000 marchers that participated this year, the association said. Taiwanese Designers said they organized a team to march for Taiwan this year, joining politicians, government agencies, professionals and community organizations in showing support for LGBTQIA+ people and diverse communities. As the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex
MOTIVES QUESTIONED The PLA considers Xi’s policies toward Taiwan to be driven by personal considerations rather than military assessment, the Epoch Times reports Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) latest purge of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leadership might have been prompted by the military’s opposition to plans of invading Taiwan, the Epoch Times said. The Chinese military opposes waging war against Taiwan by a large consensus, putting it at odds with Xi’s vision, the Falun Gong-affiliated daily said in a report on Thursday, citing anonymous sources with insight into the PLA’s inner workings. The opposition is not the opinion of a few generals, but a widely shared view among the PLA cadre, the Epoch Times cited them as saying. “Chinese forces know full well that
RSS