PONE-D-22-02471Evaluation of queen cell acceptance and royal jelly production between hygienic and non-hygienic honey bee (Apis mellifera) coloniesPLOS ONE

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

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The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Manuscript Number: PONE-D-22-02471

Title: “Evaluation of queen cell acceptance and royal jelly production between hygienic and non-hygienic honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies”

My comments to the authors:

Overall, the manuscript is well written; however, a few changes are required at some places, which are highlighted in my comments below.

Abstract

Please clearly identify the research gap in the abstract.

Introduction

Line no 62: Please add some references to support such evidence “RJ contributes to the distinct attribute 62 of queens including their fertility, longevity and memory performance”

Line no 63-64: How many royal jelly proteins have been identified?

Materials and methods

Line no 95: How many colonies were selected to evaluate the hygienic behavior of honey bees?

Line 121-122: Could you mention the temperature for royal jelly storage?

Results

Line no 143-145: Please rehearse the sentence.

Line no 152-153: Could improve the way of writing.

Discussion

Could you add more literature evidences to support your findings?

Reviewer #2: The paper contain valuable information but need some revision in M& M and discussion section. A detail information must be added in material and methods section. Discussion part also need some improvement. References must be according to journal style.

Reviewer #3: ABSTRACT:

Line No. 20: write caste differentiation instead of case

Line No. 21: Royal jelly production instead of RJ differentiation

Line No. 22: Write “Further, this study unveils”

Line No. 24: Write statistically significant

Line No. 26: Write statistically significant (p<0.05)

Line No. 31: Write the names of different diets

INTRODUCTION:

The introduction on the importance of queen rearing and queen cell acceptance rate is totally missing. Please Include the importance queen rearing and queen cell acceptance rate in the beginning of introduction.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

Line No. 123: Please provide a detail how you provided each and every nutritional diets to the colonies

Line No. 125: How you provided the pollen from natural resources. Did the bee go outside and collect pollen by their selves or you collected by pollen traps and then provided? If you collected by pollen traps then how did you provided pollen to the bees. Because this pollen is usually in the form of pellets and bees don’t accept that form of pollen.

RESULTS:

Line No. 141, 150, 151, 153 etc., : Use 44.00% ± 3.59% and 10.47% ± 3.32%. The %age sign should be with each value even if it is repeated. Please observe this pattern Please use the abbreviated form “h” for hours throughout.

Line No. 140 , 143: You wrote the 24 hours. Its better to write 24 h. Please use the abbreviated form “h” for hours throughout the whole text of this manuscript.

Line 171: In heading use Royal jelly instead of RJ.

DISCUSSION:

Discussion part needs to be slightly improved. So, improve the discussion part little bit.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Hussain Ali

Reviewer #3: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-22-02471_reviewied.pdf

Evaluation of queen cell acceptance and royal jelly production between hygienic and non-hygienic honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies

PONE-D-22-02471R1

Dear Dr. Khan,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Muhammad Azhar Nadeem, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Overall this paper is well written. Authors addressed all comments carefully. I have no additional comments.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No