engleski

Beebreeding on the Adriatic islands

The Carniolan bee (Apis mellifera carnica) is the most important race of honeybees for Central European beekeepers. Autochthonous area of the Carniolan bee is the Balkan peninsula, Panonia valley and south-east side of Alps. Within this geographic race exist ecotypes adapted on local climatic and technological conditions as well as food resources. A constant need of all beekeepers is production of selected queens early enough for use in the current year. The first queens can be produced in the mediterranean area by the end of April. It is useful not only for beekeepers, but also for the scientists to shorten the selection program, and to have a possibility to multiply selection and test it in the same year. At the APIMONDIA meeting in Lunz am See from 1972 use of isolated islands for mating stations was suggested. It is possible to find a lot of examples where islands are in successful use. It is hard to count each of them, but we can stress out, for example, islands in Germany, Great Britain, France, Australia. The Adriatic coast in the Republic of Croatia has a shoreline 2 092 km long, and there is 1 185 islands of which 66 are populated. Basic meteorological characteristics have been analyzed during years with regard to bee-keeping, on the Adriatic islands according to the available meteorological data of the Komiža station (1981-1990). Since wind is an important parameter for bee-keeping, the detailed analysis of the flow regime at Komiža has been carried out, based on the observed values of strengths and directions of wind. From the obtained results it can be concluded that during the year the most frequent wind is bora from the N-NE direction, and in spring scirocco from the SE direction. Annual occurrence of wind exceeding 6B is 2%, i.e. there are 16 days with strong and 1.9 days with severe wind. Although strong wind is a rare phenomenon, it is most frequent in spring (2-3 days per month) and that from the SE quadrant. However, in 81.0% of cases in spring the strength of wind ranges from light breeze to weak wind (1-3B), and the share of calm is 3.1%. In 12.2% of cases the wind is moderately strong (4-5B) and in 3.7% stronger than 6B. The mean annual air temperature is 16.5°C, and in spring it ranges from 11.3° C to 18.6° C. Only rarely in March the negative air temperatures may occur. Warm days and nights sometimes occur already in May, and hot days in June. Therefore, the extreme temperatures range from -3.2° C in March to 33.2° C in June. The days with large amount of rain are rare, in average 1 day per year with the precipitation amount above 50 mm. Bee forage is mixture of well-known Mediterranean plants. Paliurus spina-christi, Majorana hortensis, Origanum vulgare, Erica arborea, Erica multiflorea, Arbutus unedo, Rosmarinus officinalis, Lavandula sp., inhabit the Adriatic coast and islands.

beebreeding ; adriatic islands ; queens ; Apis mellifera carnica

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