# How do you pick the queen/queens to propagate



## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

merince said:


> I am interested in how you pick the queen you're going to breed from and the drone mothers.


I pick from a hive where I know the queen is at least a year old and preferably two. That of course means they have good winter survivability and the traits that go along with that such as frugality and brood management. The hive has to be gentle and have a record of producing a honey surplus.




merince said:


> Do you do simple splits, do you graft or do you use another method?


I graft, creating queens with the Ben Harden method. Queens are placed in 3x3 queen castles with one frame of capped brood preferably and one frame of stores, with an empty frame. These are moved into 5-frame nucs. Nucs are either sold or used to requeen, or merged to create new hives.




merince said:


> Do you check to see if any of your bees exhibit hygienic behavior?


Not directly. Hygienic behavior is not the only trait that leads to survivability. If I see hygienic behavior, I will note it, but it is not something I require.




merince said:


> What other considerations do you keep in mind?


Occasionally, I will pass by a hive that has some other undesirable characteristic, such as excessive propolis production or in some way won't behave like in comb building or storing honey in the right place.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I think it's important to look at the whole picture. Are they healthy, productive and gentle? Then they are probably a good candidate to keep and even propagate in the gene pool. I expect the local feral bees to provide my drones, but I don't suppress them in my hives either. In outyards I tend to do walkaway splits. This is quick and easy for me to do and maintains more genetic lines. In my home yard, most years I graft. Every time I graft I try to pick a different "mother" to keep the gene pool broad. I do not check for hygienic behavior.


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## merince (Jul 19, 2011)

Thank you, Michael Bush and Solomon Parker!

In particular, when you split/graft, do you do so with the top 1, 5 or 10 or how many out of the hives in your apiaries? In each particular year, do you graft from a single mother or do you try to maintain multiple lines and alternate who you graft from?

Solomon, when a hive exhibits a negative or undesirable characteristic, what do you do? Do you requeen immediately to insure they don't propagate that characteristic into the genetic pool for example?


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## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

merince said:


> In particular, when you split/graft, do you do so with the top 1, 5 or 10 or how many out of the hives in your apiaries? In each particular year, do you graft from a single mother or do you try to maintain multiple lines and alternate who you graft from?


I grafted from three hives this year, one from each apiary.



merince said:


> Solomon, when a hive exhibits a negative or undesirable characteristic, what do you do? Do you requeen immediately to insure they don't propagate that characteristic into the genetic pool for example?


If they are really mean, I will requeen at the next available opportunity, usually after the main honey flow. The very unproductive hives are completely dissolved and their queen mooshed and their resources donated to the mating nucs. Sometimes they are so weak (for instance one I had run over by a trampoline this last December) that they are merged with a nuc or another hive because they have nothing to offer to a mating nuc. 

If there are not enough dinks to dissolve to make mating nucs, I will borrow large amounts of brood from some other hives. These ones' job is to build back up for the summer dearth. If they don't do that, the queen is mooshed and the rest of the hives is united with one of the nucs. So I guess I'm selecting for a couple more traits there, early spring buildup, and ability to bounce back and raise a lot of brood with a few bees. Around here, the ability to raise a lot of brood with a few bees is important because the local feral bees (and mine by relation) typically keep relatively small clusters, usually smaller than a soccer ball, so they need to be able to build up rapidly from that smaller cluster.

I'm not terribly worried about the drones getting out and affecting things, though I probably should be. A queen I purchased was very mean and produced a lot of drones and she may have affected the gene pool temporarily. She is gone, and her effects are being bred out. I consider gentleness my most important selector, right behind surviving of course. Right after that is honey production. Those are always the three main things, and then all the other incidental selections that are made in the course of executing the method.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

Honey production and temperment here....... For me thats the final clues mite free but no honey not good in my book. others disagree,, so pick whats important to you.


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## merince (Jul 19, 2011)

I probably should have included how I selected who to breed from this year. 

I had 4 hives that overwintered well. All of them had similar cluster sizes in April. 3 were my local queens and the line has overwintered successfully for 4 years in my location without treatments. The 4th was a vsh queen that I installed in late Aug in a hive that had a failed supercedure. All 4 yielded 1 deep of honey, although the vsh was late in the game, so I could not judge her honey gathering abilities. All 4 went into winter with 2 deeps and similar weights.

I picked the heaviest of my "local" 3, so that I promote a line that is frugal and the vsh, so I could have variety. 

Next year, I will probably do the same, although if I have a number of winners, I will probably do the hygienic test as a tie-breaker and I will probably try to pick a line that is fastdious about their bottom board. 

Thanks for the insights and I welcome new ones!


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>In particular, when you split/graft, do you do so with the top 1, 5 or 10 or how many out of the hives in your apiaries? 

I usually split the whole yard unless one is not doing so well in which case I might give both halves of the split a queen cell, or not split and give the hive (still intact) a queen cell.

>In each particular year, do you graft from a single mother or do you try to maintain multiple lines and alternate who you graft from?

I try to always alternate hives and never graft from the same hive twice.


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