Parameters influencing queen body mass and their importance as determined by machine learning in honey bees (Apis mellifera carnica)

Most parameters describing queen bee quality are reflected in the queen’s body mass, which is in turn considered a robust measure and the best indicator of queen quality. State-of-the-art machine learning was used for the first time to jointly evaluate both biological and rearing parameters influencing queen body mass. Three different models were developed using different combinations of parameters. Regardless of the model composition, we...