# Morphological measurements of our Queens



## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

BeePro was raising some big headed queens last summer. :lpf:


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

I am not sure I would classify the measurements as bigger is better, but rather a relative quality assessment. The size is not used as a directional selection metric, but bigger queens generally have more ovarioles, which means more eggs and more bees.

I realize you raise beef cattle, but it would be like saying in the dairy industry bigger is always better and compare a Jersey to a Holstein. They each have their good qualities.

The measurements David Tarpy uses are old standbys because they do not change over time. Relatively speaking bigger is better in the sense that the morphometrics of a queen is compared against that of other queens. But keep in mind the queen is genetically similar to a worker, but the expression of phenotypic characteristics is influenced by diet and environment. It can be a gradient from worker to queen phenotype.

I do not know of anyone using EPD's in honey bees. I would speculate that short generation time and multiple mating make it challenging. David Tarpy's lab can provide additional evaluations which are interesting and useful and to some extent I use progeny testing. But again, much of this is limited due to a short generation time and the inability to effectively store eggs, sperm or embryos. People are working on this though.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

That's kinda my point in a way. With dairy specific physical characteristics do relate specific production qualities, but not related to just size, more so relating specific attributes to specific production characteristics. All focused upon a dairy parlour industry. Bigger is not better in the livestock industry 

In my eye, that thorax measurement is important... because if it means larger abdomen then than will mean less queens getting uptop through the excluder. 
There is an example of that specific measurement translating into useful info to address specific problem. 

I know our bugs are too variable to track as they do in the livestock industry. And as you say, control of the traits is key


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

My queen rearing apiarist talks about wing size in camparison to abdomen length. She feels those smaller type queens which develop shorter abdomens don't mate aswell. She describes it as the virgin wearing a nice neat skirt, not a mini skirt, not a dress, just a nice sexy skirt. 
Abdomen size holds a lot of weight in linking it to good performance for many reasons


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

I think the main differences are the end use as well. We don't really need any physical attributes the queen offers other than being able to lay well, which may or may not be hindered by physical size. Colonies are judged as a super organism which does stem from the queens genetics, but also the drones she mated with and most of the traits we look at are behavioral not anything that is heavily attributed to physical traits.

I think a standard approach of creating parental groups or even 'heterotic' pools would work well. Again though, most traits are behavioral so it's really just depends on phenotypic selection and creating the best possible conditions you can for when queens are being produced.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

So it begs the question, if physical attributes don't actually mean anything other than it probably means it's a well developed queen, why bother measuring the head and thorax differences of 3mm?


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Ian said:


> So it begs the question, if physical attributes don't actually mean anything other than it probably means it's a well developed queen, why bother measuring the head and thorax differences of 3mm?


Because it tells you if she can fit thru an excluder. In your operation, that alone should be grounds for culling, I've seen your photos of a box in the hot room that seems to have arrived with a brood nest rather than honey. It turns into a major distraction with an ultimate cost (labor etc) ultimately higher than the revenue from that colony.

But here then is the real question. What costs more ? Taking the calipers to every queen as they are harvested, or, dealing with an occaisional brood nest that ended up on the truck and hauled into the hot room ? You either spend it on the time it takes to do the measurements, or, you spend it dealing with the hassles of bees in the honey house.

Which brings on another question, after some experience measuring each and every queen as they are harvested, will that person develop an eye for the result to the point the calipers aren't really neeeded any more ?


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

that is a physiological attribute I select for, which simply equates to large thorax to better excluder management. 
We don't measure but we do cull according to size. Thst is how much I hate skinny queens... lol


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

grozzie2 said:


> But here then is the real question. What costs more ? Taking the calipers to every queen as they are harvested, or, dealing with an occaisional brood nest that ended up on the truck and hauled into the hot room ? You either spend it on the time it takes to do the measurements, or, you spend it dealing with the hassles of bees in the honey house


When we talk passing on gentleness traits, it follows the drone. When we talk hygienic behavioural traits, it follows the queen. 
I look at Russians as being skinny, I think of Italians as being thick, Carni In Between. I think of queen size as having much to do with conditions throughout the development stage of that queen but obviously their size is inherently linked to queen types. 
Lots to consider. I've had skinny queens lay boxes of brood right through the excluder boxes up into the supers ... lol. I've also had fatties that have no drive. 


I think one strategy I'm going to employ is more drone saturation. I'm also going to keep better track of breeder mothers and their "particular" pedigree. 
I have some select Saskatraz queens coming in this year I want to incorporate into my op. And track specifically

Size will be considered but basically only for a logistical reason


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

Ian,

I think some people equate size with quality, that is why measurements are taken. Also, size can give advantage in laying etc... as has been stated, but I think there's a point of negative return in this regard too. A large fat queen expends more energy moving around and laying eggs. Since there's a maximum rate of egg laying, being able to produce eggs that exceed this rate really isn't that useful either. I think an interesting study would be to look at colonies with exceptional brooding capacity and try to find the cause of why some colonies are able to grow quicker than others. Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind in efficiency of brooding is comb size and structure where narrow frames and small cell would really help keep egg laying at a good pace. But I think one thing to really look closely at, would be how much does the queen influence brooding rate and capacity if at all and then look at the size of queen etc... if you can correlate the benefits of bigger and possibly more robust queens.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

If you have 2 queens , both a Carni and an Italian cross, and the Italian coloured queen measures its thorax .5mm larger, will you draw the conclusion that that queen will perform better? Being 1/2 mm larger thorax ?


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

Or if you had 2 breeder queens, would you cull the queen with the .5mm smaller thorax from your breeding program?
If the answer is no, then why measure the thorax and head at all.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

You may find this study interesting:
http://jinsectscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/11/1/82.abstract


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

"Overall, and within most of the individual samples, there was no correlation of ovariole number with other morphological attributes such as thoracic width, wing length, or wet weight."

Interesting


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

So if you were going to buy one queen would you choose the large one or the small one?

If you had virgins emerge in your incubator, would you select the largest ones to place first, leaving the smaller ones with a small thorax for last if mating nuc availability was lacking at the time? Sure you would. 

DO you cull out self made queens in mating nucs you find if the placed graft cell or virgin didn't take? I do. Those queens are almost always dinks.

Sure, smaller queens can perform well, but I don't believe you will find a big queen with a big thorax and long fat abdomen reared with poor nutrition. No matter what size, they still have to have good genetics and be well mated of course. But the breeder queens, nutrition and management of cell builder colonies I _do_ control.

My cell builder selections and management are always a top priority all season long. I choose those that do the best job, produce the best cells & biggest queens. No matter if it is necessary or not.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

The thing is your not choosing for thorax and head measurements, those measures differ by .3-.5 of a mm. 
If you cull by size it would likely be selecting by abdomen size or overall queen appearance. 

Lauri can your eye tell the difference of .5mm measure on a queens head or thorax?


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

"The relationship of ovariole number to several measures of body size, sperm count, and viral load was determined as described in Delaney et al. (2011). No correlation was found with thoracic width, head capsule width, and length of either wing, either across all sources or within sources. As expected, thoracic width was positively correlated with wing length "

"there was no correlation of ovariole number with any other measure of queen reproductive potential. In particular, it should be noted that the overall size of the queen, whether gauged by wet weight or measures of body size such as thoracic width, was not a good predictor of ovariole number "


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Since smaller bees have shorter gestation times, (earlier emergence) and this is directly related to Varroa reproduction, if I were trying to measure, I would cull the larger ones.


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

Ian, there is a larger body of research on the topic of queen quality and the correlates mentioned by Tarpy. As he wrote, the measurements are not an absolute predictor but they have been carried over from other researchers. As Lauri wrote, large queens are often favored and preferred. Where this becomes interesting is how such measurements relate to overall colony fitness and queen fecundity.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Hoppingarner had some that correlated size with number of ovarioles. Seems like it was from thirty years ago or so...


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

Michael Bush said:


> Since smaller bees have shorter gestation times, (earlier emergence) and this is directly related to Varroa reproduction, if I were trying to measure, I would cull the larger ones.


Michael, I do not remember seeing this. There was some work done looking at shorter development times and the variation within strains, but I do not recall it being tied to size. I has been a while though...


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

Michael Bush said:


> Hoppingarner had some that correlated size with number of ovarioles. Seems like it was from thirty years ago or so...


Yes, there are other researchers that have looked at this.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I guess I read it 30 years ago... but it's further back than that, looks like 1959:
https://academic.oup.com/jee/articl...Genetic-Control-of-Size-in-Queen-Honey-Bees-1


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

"In a recent communication, Hoopingarner and Farrar (1959) report that the weight of the queen honeybee is genetically controlled, and that a proportional relationship exists between body weight and the number of ovarian tubules. These statements corroborate the findings by Eckert (1934) who found that the number of ovarioles tends to be influenced by hereditary factors. In a subsequent study Eckert (1937) was unable to correlate number of ovarioles with actual brood production. Whether a queen with a greater body weight is capable of laying more eggs than a small and lightweight queen remained to be determined; hence the present study was undertaken."--Relation of Body Weight to Fecundity in Queen Honeybees R. Boch and C. A. Jamieson

https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...honeybeesdiv/4368D86EA830108B954A7DB062C9A373


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

In cattle, within the EPDs we can correlate birth weight with predicted calving ease. Bone structure can be correlated to milk production, a horned head is tied directly to certain reproductive characteristics...I won't get into.

So if measuring the head and thorax is supposed to relate to a larger abdomen, which then infers more ovaries and better production, 
There would be no discrepancy in those findings. 

environmental factors influence more of those Queen characteristics 

Queen mothers with larger head and thorax means nothing but a big head and big shoulders


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

Ian said:


> Queen mothers with larger head and thorax means nothing but a big head and big shoulders


Perhaps the development of your opinion would benefit from additional reading of the research in this area. Just as it may not be clear to many why bone structure would correlate to milk production or how a horned animal influences reproductive characteristics, size in honey bee queens does correlate to other reproductive factors. Like cattle, or other animals those correlations may not be initially obvious.

To be clear, I don't select for the size of the queen, but it does have bearing, which is why it is factored into Tarpy's model.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

I'm just posing the question, hand off the pistol... lol 

The point is are those reproductive traits passed on or developed

If you have, link me to addition reading which shows the relationship thorax size and increased reproductiveness


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

I think there's a point of diminishing returns though. A larger queen takes more energy to move around and lay eggs. Also, there's a maximum amount of eggs that can be laid in a given unit of time, so having the reproductive capabilities to exceed that, doesn't really give an advantage. I don't really tend to judge queens based on size, but I have seen smaller queens produced from walk away splits or smaller nuc's that may have been queenless typically don't perform well or last very long. Ian, I do think there are genetic components involved, most probably link directly to the nutrition of the larval queen but some queen lines could just produce smaller queens in general. I think for the most part, we equate a good sized queen as being a queen produced under ideal conditions and should then be able to be a top performer.


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## smosloff (Oct 23, 2015)

In reading this thread I do look at size as part of choosing a queen. But I also raise chickens and can't help but think of the meat birds that have been bread to the point that they can't fly anymore? Just Thinking.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

>>just thinking<<
That's the thought I'm after 👍


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Ian - as a breeder of bees, I am *FAR* more interested in the size and especially the rate of buildup of the brood patches than in the size of the queen's head, thorax, or caboose.

Also high on my list is pollen collection, followed closely by honey production. Gentleness comes in quite a ways down my list. I didn't get into beekeeping thinking that I was not going to get stung. In the end of things, 50 more pounds of honey per colony average far outweighs the usual greater number of stings that non-gentle bees deliver. I know most beekeeps do not think that way, but I'm just trying to make enough money to expand this into a full-time job.

One morphological thing I do measure is proboscis length. Once I found a patch of flowers that the bees are attracted to, but are not pulling much honey from, I wondered if there were bees with a longer proboscis who might jump that nectar flow? Turns out that the Caucasian bee is a good one to breed in to get a longer proboscis. I got some to breed in, but unfortunately lost them to a spray rig. Since then, they have become a bit rare, but I have recently found a source, Old Sol Apiaries sells them.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

>>One morphological thing I do measure is proboscis length.<<

You will have to explain that to me. Are you measuring your breeder queens toung length? And how exactly? 
Or do you mean you are bringing traits into your breeding pool which will promote longer proboscis length 

Interesting thought


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

>>Gentleness comes in quite a ways down my list<<

I don't know, I like not getting stung. I'm a couple years fresh into rearing queens, easing my transition, this season I'm all in. Gentleness is one of my criterias near the top. I'll be propagating those selected traits only through drone colonies.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Ian said:


> >>One morphological thing I do measure is proboscis length.<<
> 
> You will have to explain that to me. Are you measuring your breeder queens toung length? And how exactly?
> Or do you mean you are bringing traits into your breeding pool which will promote longer proboscis length
> ...



Both, actually.

I actually take an average of about 100 workers, and the queen form a potential breeder colony. I use a dial caliper. They do not appear to enjoy this very much.

I also need to obtain some caucasian stock, just to bring up the trait - long proboscis, or "tongue".


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

JSL said:


> To be clear, I don't select for the size of the queen, but it does have bearing, which is why it is factored into Tarpy's model.


But, when catching queens, don't you dispose of overly small queens? Occasionally, I catch a queen with a thorax that's about the same size as a worker bee's thorax. I destroy those.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

Michael Palmer said:


> But, when catching queens, don't you dispose of overly small queens? Occasionally, I catch a queen with a thorax that's about the same size as a worker bee's thorax. I destroy those.


Regardless of her laying performance? 
I kill off those skinny queens, strictly based on the fact that they will cause trouble with excluders .


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

kilocharlie said:


> Both, actually.
> 
> I actually take an average of about 100 workers, and the queen form a potential breeder colony. I use a dial caliper. They do not appear to enjoy this very much.
> 
> I also need to obtain some caucasian stock, just to bring up the trait - long proboscis, or "tongue".


Interesting 
So throughout your years of breeding efforts, have you made head way? Have you noticed more of your stock with longer proboscis and by how much have you bee. Able to extend it?


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

Those sorts of things are proxies for the real thing. Colony performance. Can they survive mites/viruses, can they survive winter, how much honey they produce, how much honey do they consume? Get the proxy wrong and pay the price. Plus, there is that nature/nurture thing that confounds things. There is one problem with the black box approach, when bringing in new genetics, they may not perform as well as local stock. There are probably lots of things that the bees you have do really well, especially if you have been selecting them for a while. However, they may benefit from a few traits that new stock can bring. But if you wash the new stock out before they can make a contribution to existing stock, then there is no point.

However, there are molecular marker proxies that are being developed. Useful in that they are tied to the actual genetics of the thing. A person may bring in new stock and have some molecular markers that are unique to that new stock. You know that you have successfully integrated that trait when it starts showing up in the local population as you sample them. It can create a lot of flexibility and reduce chances of throwing the baby out with the bath water in various situations. In my TF operation, I certainly hope to use these kinds of tools to track what is happening in my population as they become available and reasonable cost. Through time it may be possible to develop dependable proxies using these tools. 

Good luck with your queen rearing Ian.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

>>Get the proxy wrong and pay the price. Plus, there is that nature/nurture thing<

Iharder, aside from picking the prodigy of your stock based on stacked boxes, which traits are you selecting for and how are finding them? 

I've made it a practice to track my breeder queens through 2 years of assessments. One method of eliminating that youth factor which hides flaws


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