Ueen quality, under the assumption that a bigger spermatheca could hold a larger volume of semen [35]. Its size can be measured with or without having the tracheal nets, and its diameter must be bigger than 1.2 mm for high-quality NE-100 Protocol queens [25,37]. This measurement was applied as a direct estimation in the volume and as an indirect estimation of your theoretical maximum variety of spermatozoa stored in spermatheca [26,28,34,37]. The size on the spermatheca is influenced by rearing circumstances and genetics, and it can be inversely proportional towards the larval age at which the queen was reared from [26,43]. Queens raised from newly hatched larvae showed larger spermatheca [42,43,45]. On the other hand, the spermatheca is hardly ever filled entirely, because the semen’s occupied volume in experimental queens was reported to be on average 47 [26,34]. From a hypothetical viewpoint, a “high quality” queen should really consequently be morphologically defects-free, and it must have a huge body, spermatheca, and ovaries in order toAnimals 2021, 11,3 ofstore a higher quantity of spermatozoa and lay a copious quantity of eggs, preferably over 2000 eggs every day [14,46]. Within this study, both external and internal physical queen traits had been investigated. Such traits include: body weight, weight and width of the tagmata (head, thorax, and abdomen), length from the correct forewing, diameter and volume on the spermatheca, number of sperms in the spermatheca, and number of ovarioles. Ovarioles had been counted rather than weighed because the ovary’s weight could be influenced by the developmental stages on the eggs they include, as pointed out by Amiri et al. [35]. The aim of this study was to investigate phenotypic and genetic variability from the above-mentioned traits for queen high-quality inside a smaller population bred by an expert queen breeder in Northern Italy. two. Components and Approaches The queens had been supplied by an Italian queen-breeding and beekeeping company that produces and sells about 40000 queens per week, from spring to late summer time. The rearing in the queens was characterized by a standardized production program and by traceability of each maternal and paternal lines of every single queen (the pedigree). The standardized rearing program consists of using only queen-less finisher colonies. These colonies are fed and treated inside a standardized method to deliver uniform good quality. PSB36 site Especially, these colonies receive new brood from a single single apiary frequently. The “brood-donor” apiary is composed of genetically uniform colonies. The grafts are inserted inside the finisher colonies for a week. Afterwards, the royal cells are collected and incubated at 34.five C for 11 days. Just after incubation, the cells are brought towards the mating station where they may be inserted in the mating nuclei. This procedure was carried out by the exact same operators following a strict timetable along the season, which minimizes any possible error variance resulting from management practices. This study was performed on 147 queens bred in the course of spring/summer seasons of 2017 (n = 70) and 2018 (n = 77). The analyzed queens were bred at diverse instances with the production season reported as the ordinal variety of the week in the year in which the mated queen was harvested in the mating nucleus. All queens naturally mated in the same area within the year. The queens had been bred in groups of sisters from ten maternal lines in 2017, and 7 maternal lines in 2018. Moreover, the maternal lines shared common ancestors. The maternal lines queens mated at an isolated mating.