Pengaruh Pengayaan Pakan Terhadap Perkembangan Koloni dan Produksi Lebah Madu (Apis cerana)

Abstract

Apis cerana is one of the well known Indonesian local honey bees. An colony of A. cerana can produce about 10 kg of honey per year, depend on the availability of the food. The objective of this study to determine the effect of honey bee food resources enrichment on development and production of the colonies of A. cerana. The experiment was conducted from August to October 2013 in the Negara Ratu village Natar, South Lampung which represent the natural habitat and in Butterfly Garden Gita Persada with represent habitat that have already been enriched with natural food resources. Six colonies of A. cerana were used in this study. Student test (α = 0,05) was used to compare the development and the production of the colonies of A. cerana in the two locations. Enrichment of the food resources does not have a significant effect on increasing the number of brood cells ( p> 0.22) and pollen pots ( p > 0.11), but the enrichment of food resources have a significant effect on increasing at number of honey pots ( p= 0.001 ) and weight of honey ( p = 0.004 ) during 12 weeks of observations. The enrichment of food resources also have a significant effect at week 8 and 12 of the observations ( p = 0.003 - 0.012 ) but not have significant effect on colonies weight the other observations weeks ( p> 0 , 08). Keywords: food enrichment , development, colonies, production honey