Pakistan J. Zool., vol. 47(1), pp. 241-247, 2015. Effect of Different Nest Box Materials on the Mating of European Bumblebee, Bombus terrestris (Hymenoptera: Apidae) under Controlled Environmental Conditions Muhammad Imran, 1* Munir Ahmad, 1 Muhammad Farooq Nasir 1 and Shafqat Saeed 2 1 Department of Entomology, Pir Mehr Ali Shah, Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi, Murree Road, Rawalpindi, Pakistan 2 Department of Entomology, Faculty of Plant Protection, University College of Agriculture, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan Abstract.-We examined the possible effect of different box materials in relation to time interval on the mating of European bumblebee, Bombus terrestris under controlled environmental conditions. The lowest rate of mating was found in wooden box with mean of 49% pairs and the highest mating tendency was found in polycarbonate box. Further in relation to time interval, during the first minutes of introduction of queens and males in mating cage, significant difference between all three boxes showed the highest mating rate within first minutes in polycarbonate box. Similarly, during the five minutes of time interval from introduction, mating tendency was high in polycarbonate box which was 1-2 fold higher from iron mesh box and wooden box. During the time elapse of fifteen minutes of introduction of queens and males in the mating cage, there existed no significant difference between the polycarbonate box and iron mesh box but significantly different in wooden box. Such important abiotic affect of mating environment suggests the possibilities for higher mating tendency needed for their commercial breeding programs. Key words: Bombus terrestris, mating requirement, box material, time interval. INTRODUCTION Bumblebees are imperative pollinators of a variety of greenhouse crops mainly effective in pollinating for the solanaceous family commercial plants like eggplant and tomato (Buchmann and Hurley, 1978; Free, 1993). Their effective crop pollination and flower visitation inside enclosed farming systems has given the growers the chance to reduce the work expenses of pollination and assure high quality yield (Iwasaki, 1995). Bumblebee and honeybees keep the record of suitable host plants for food reserves and best pollinator with their rapid learning abilities (Ali et al., 2014). Bumblebees are the most commonly used pollinators for the pollination of mostly greenhouse crops. Five different bumblebee species viz., Bombus terrestris L., B. lucorum, B. occidentalis, B. ignitus and B. impatiens are reared commercially to meet the needs of farmers for crop pollination with B. terrestris being the most commonly used species. With __________________________________ * Corresponding author: imranmalikvirgo@gmail.com 0030-9923/2015/0001-0241 $ 8.00/0 Copyright 2015 Zoological Society of Pakistan increase in area under enclosed farming of vegetables and fruits, their demand has increased with time and more than a million colonies of the bumblebees per year are used by the farmers to meet their needs (Velthuis and Doorn, 2006). Indigenous bumblebee species, B. haemorrhoidalis Smith has been considered important to rear and use for greenhouse pollination (Umer et al., 2014) Bumblebee produces large colonies and adapts quite well to artificial environment. Even though the production techniques have been developed since 1987 of its commercialization, some problems of increasing the quantity and quality of artificially reared colonies in commercial rearing is still felt (Hughes, 1996). There exist variation in the number of males, workers and daughter queens produced (Beekman and van Stratum, 2000). Queens are the only caste to overwinter (enter diapause), during the last stage of colony sexuals are produced and mating is done after mating queens went to diapause and remaining males and workers die in the colony. In early spring queens that overwintered leave their hibernation sites. The queen builds up a mass of pollen and lays her first batch eggs into the pollen mass after searching appropriate place to found a colony. Once