Comparison of Traps Collecting Propolis by Honey Bees

The last few years numerous publications have been published about the properties and plant origin of propolis, the glue-like resinous product collected by honeybees. Although, only one scientific experiment has been previously conducted on propolis collection techniques by honey bees, making the relative literature extremely limited in this area. The present study scopes to evaluate the effect of the trap types on the quantity of propolis collected by honeybees. For this reason, at two different locations, five different types of propolis collection traps, applied on Langstroth bee hives, were tested: 3 hand-cut screens plus one commercial screen on the top bars, as well as a lateral side modification of a Langstroth hive. Results show that two hand-cut screens with smaller openings (1 × 1 mm and 2 × 2 mm) as well as the commercial screen collected significantly more propolis than the others (F4,41 = 43.21, P 0.0001). Furthermore, the two hand-cut screens filled faster with propolis.