# Queens and genetics



## PyroBee

I want to attempt to raise some queens next year. I want to learn all I can before I try. So some questions: drones are exactly like their queen correct? Workers are a combination? So when you select larvae, it is not really ever going to be exactly like their queen. What percentage of larvae would be close to their queen? Do most move mating nucs away from the yard that has drones that you want to mate with your virgins? If so how far?


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## JRG13

Yes and no, daughters can be similar to their mother, just depends on how many local alleles are floating around. Sex alleles determine whether or not a viable egg is produced, if both alleles match, a diploid drone results but is typically sensed by the workers and removed soon after hatching or maybe even as an egg. That being said, if you worked hard as a breeder, with some molecular assistance, you could back cross in multiple sex alleles and maintain similar lines of bees that would breed fairly true once all was said and done and have enough diversity in sex alleles to get queens mated properly.


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## crocodilu911

pryoBee, the genetic features, like honey production, gentle bees, resistance to pests, etc, are transmitted exclusively by the queen. so if you graft a queen that exhibits features you like and want populated, then your resulting daughters will have a large part of those features , if not all. the drone will only give a few characters to the offspring. there are all kinds of studies out there you can read on this. for a first timer like you , I think just getting started is a good thing. thy the grafting, see how that works out for you. worry about the genetics of it later once you mastered the process of making them. try and bread a good queen, always in her second year, so this year you could start taking notes on your hives, like best producer, best honey to brood ratio, best resistance to mites and pests...keep taking notes thru winter and spring, and before you graft make your selection.

I would make a mating yard if you have enough bees. I think maybe 5-6 hives would do, and you can give each a nice 2 frames of drone brood. you can also select them, so that your drones are of good stock. you need to do that at least 4-6 weeks prior to having queens for mating, since they need to draw out the drone brood frames, lay in them( I suggest placing them in the middle of your brood chamber, and keep syrup on them ). once you got that going, you can place out there a few hundred (200-300 mating nucs) since each queen flying will take about 10-15 drones over the period of 3-5 days to mate. they need to be mature drones, if you make your queens before your drones are mature, you will have a poor mating result. to be honest I used mating yards with 100-120 colonies and about 300-450 mating nucs. we used to mate that way because it was easy for us, but i assume you only want do do a few queens at the time, i would suggest another approach. make your mating nucs, carry them away, and bring back to your yard after 1 week. at that point have the queen cell ready to introduce, or even the virgin queens in cages for them. let settle 1 day and then introduce. if you introduce cells, then kill all of their own cells , if you introduce virgin, i would do the same, but not necessary. also i would feed at introduction. keep those worker bees busy with feed. 

i have seen many ways of doing it, and i have done it several ways, and the best advice i can give you is to do it your way, read, look and ask, but ultimately do it your own way, whatever works for you. for instance now, i do natural selection, by making walk away splits. i want my bees to select themselves, and i know this way i will get the best bee for my area. after a few years of that i will go back and start selecting. 
i hope this helps


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## AstroBee

crocodilu911 said:


> the genetic features, like honey production, gentle bees, resistance to pests, etc, are transmitted exclusively by the queen.


?? :scratch:

Would you mind posting some references supporting this statement?


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## crocodilu911

AstroBee said:


> ?? :scratch:
> 
> Would you mind posting some references supporting this statement?


4th generation beekeeper with some 25 years of experience. but I remember reading this in some book a few years back. I am trying to find the book but I think my dad has it now. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_(bee) also I google this, I find interesting. I am sure it has been read. http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/principles.html
there are also a bunch of articles in French , like this one http://www.apiculture.com/sante-de-labeille/articles/faux_bourdon.htm and this one https://books.google.com/books?id=X...on des caractere des reines d'abeille&f=false.
I also found an article in Romanian that I think it's worth reading, http://www.albine.info/ameliorarea-la-albine/ .

i do admit my statement is based on long time observation and what i was thought at home. it might be wrong from the scientific point of view , but on the other hand, some scientists are wrong from the "working bees" point of view. 

not to start a she said he said war, just saying in my experience, if you select the queens long enough, then the resulting generations, will exhibit the same or better results than the original mother. i also have some notes somewhere form our queen operation a few years ago, to support that daughters do get the mother's character.  

not to argue with science. i was just talking out of personal experience.


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## AstroBee

I do respect your 25 years of experience and that you come from a long line of beekeepers and I really enjoy reading posts from those who have really honed their craft, so please keep contributing!! However, I respectfully disagree with your statement: "the genetic features, like honey production, gentle bees, resistance to pests, etc, are transmitted exclusively by the queen." I've read the Glenn link several years ago and it supports the critical role of drones in the resulting offspring. Another thing to consider is that if the queen exclusively controlled the traits within colonies, then there would likely not be any AHB in the USA. Of course that's not the case. Also consider VSH behavior, this is supplanted into populations through insemination, i.e., from drones.


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## crocodilu911

Astro, I will keep contributing. I do have a office job now, so I do have the occasional minute here and there to write stuff on this forum. 

it was just a personal opinion, and what I always held as being the truth. I can't remember exactly what traits the queen controls, but I know that there are some that she passes on, and some that come from the drone. I am not talking about the genetics of it, I mean the daughters get 32 chromosomes 16 and 16, so basically , or at least in that respect they are 50% queen and 50% drone genetics. I am talking about traits. like, this queens daughters are more prone to propolis and hygienic behavior, these are excellent brood queens, but poor honey producers, this one makes a lot of honey but is sensitive to pests and disease. 

I read a while back about it, and to be honest with you, the depth of this science is something that never really interested me, so I did not put to much effort into it. my dad bought a book on it, and I read it, and that s the extent of my scientific knowledge on the subject, and as you can see I can't remember the name of the book or the title. I went to law school, so science for me is not something that really awakens my interest. you know how you have some beekeepers out there that are avid insect lovers, and they need to know everything about them...I am not at all that guy. even bee anatomy is something that I need to get a refresh course on, because I can't remember sometimes how many legs they have  joking , I know it's 5 ) but seriously, I believe all the science, and those people that experiment and observe bees, I have all the respect for them. I do believe they are helping us , professionals, to have better bees, keep our bees healthy and their work is very appreciated. 

I come from Europe, and compared to us there, where bee science is raised to the rank of research institutes funded by governments and universities , what we have going on here in the US is , to be honest and in my opinion, a nice attempt at space flight by new Zealand. I mean, we do stuff, but still the others come up with the cure. 

that being said, I am happy the fda , usda and all hose 3-5 letter organizations in this country approved Apivar and now I can treat my bees with something other than Tactic and oil  I treat with apivar in the winter, and my hives as of this weekend are still keeping their mite population under control. I love science  

but back to the genetics of bees. I was raised in a family where dinner and lunch and breakfast were reasons to talk bees, and half of my kin has bees. even if my dada is now semi retired, he still has bees and makes a living off of them. I was told, since I was a small kid, that drones a vital for mating, and that some traits are passed on by them and some are passed on by the queen. I do not remember exactly what it was, but next time I talk to my dad I will ask him , because now I am curious. for example, when I graft, I look for a few parameters in my mother queen, and frankly I do not care about the drones, since I do not artificially inseminate. ( as a parenthesis, bees have lived without artificial insemination for the past..oh I don't know, billions of years  so I trust their instinct better that us fertilizing them with what looks like a great drone )
the traits I look for are: honey production, resistance to pests, brood pattern and frames of brood in spring, honey reserves in winter and how fast they eat them, and I look at these patterns over the whole sisterhood. what I mean by that is that when I was doing this in France, we sold some queens for $150/each, and I do not mean breeder queens. we had reached a genetic point in the selection, to where all our queens, were making more honey that our friend's bees in that particular area and on those particular flows. that is all that interested us. I mean you can talk to breeders and they will advertise their product, but we used to beat their results, and by a long mile too. 

we used to keep notes on every hive in the yard, and we used to do that by writing on each lid, and each hive had a number. in the fall we used to go out and get all those no off the lids, and then again in spring after the first inspection. we did had about 4000 hives. 
we had 10 lines of queens, and 1 line of wild, natural mated , whatever queens. the 10 lines of sisters would be the ones considered for selection, and also the natural line. we would sort the no out ( I had these huge excel files) and we would decide on 5 queen lines. let's number them A to E. so I would select the first 10 out of each line, and I would bring them to the shop. so I had 50 hives that I would graft out of. I would graft out of each and every one. so I might have a new line of queens, called A 238, and then A121, then B12 and E489. or sometimes I had AA321 of AB23. we kept records, and I believe we had something like 10 years of records. all our 1400-1800 nucs/year would get those queens we grafted and some of them would be made by walk away splits out of the natural hives (swarms we caught, hives we lost lids or genetic trace on). so let's say we made 1800 nucs this year, I used to have at least 25% of them without introducing a queen in there, or better said a cell. I would have about 250 mated queens, that we made in one yard, set up specially for it, and the rest would get a queen cell from what I grafted. I would get at the end a 80-85% take on all, so I would have between 1400-1600 nucs that made it that year. they would have a chance to get strong and then the next year, they would be placed into the honey making circuit. I would evaluate their no, at the end of he year, and the same for the second year of those queens. I would only consider them for grafting in their 3rd year. if they did great 2 years in a row , I would graft out of them, and I mean great, following my strict parameters for selection. 
we would mate about 300 -400 nucs/ yard of 2 year and 3rd year hives. we had yards of 120 hives/yard, so 120 hives provided the genetic material in drones, for the 300-400 nucs. we would always make 3 frame nucs, and never use them until maybe our July lavender flow (these were nucs made in early april). the nucs made in average 10kg(23lbs) of lavender honey in the supers and then another 15kg(38lbs ) in the deeps. we would do 2 extractions, one we pulled the supers, then returned the hives home, and we would go thru the hive body to clean up of honey. before you say something, you need to know lavender producing areas and lavender does not have much pollen, so by the end of the month, the hives are down to maybe 1-2 frames of brood, if that. the best ones we had were down to 0 brood. a lot of bees, but no brood, and the body was filled with honey. so we cleaned it out, and then fed them syrup to build back reserves. it worked so good for us, in that area, that in 4 weeks after that hives had 4-5 brood and full of honey with the fall flow we had home and the sugar water we gave them. then wintered great and came out in spring looking like champs 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUvVi1q2RWE this is the first feeding in spring. on nucs, from the previous year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac_rbwWvcBA this is first visit in spring to these hives, and we enlarged the brood nest. top feeder and syrup. you can see on the lid, how we used to mark our notes. you have in the middle the queen line, BK , the no to the right side, and all the information regarding year and production and stuff on the left. this is the first part of that video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wdgPr2A9pI


so with all this being said, I noticed, so did my family that certain traits are passed down by the queen. there might not have been a extensive study done on this, but, there has been extensive observation on the matter. so we noticed that no matter what drone she mates with, and we do not control that, the fact that she makes honey, has little to no brood at the end of the season, winters well with few reserves and then explodes in spring to make a lot of honey on the acacia flow in may, and is also able to give us a nuc in the passing, are some traits that AA121 got from her mom AA738. witch our record shows that her and her sister had the same tendencies, as did all her daughters and nieces on this line. so to tell you the truth, in the past few years I worked there, we selected exclusively from 5 lines, and we left the rest of them make natural queens without selection. meaning that we would graft off 5 lines, and then the other 5 we would make walk away nucs. the last year we did that, some of the walk away nucs actually did great the following spring, so we were wondering how they would do at the end of the 3 years.

I do think genetics is complicated, and we will probably never know everything about it. or maybe not in my lifetime  but, I think that as a beekeeper we should not limit our genetic potential in our workforce  I have 35 hives now, and I stared with 2 hives , both in medium supers, that I bought for $80 each from a local guy here. now , 2 years later I have 35 with only one attempt at grafting, ( spurred on by this forum and my will to show a simple method to other beginners) and out of those queens I grafted, i think only 5 took. it is my fault , because i introduce them the same day made the nucs, as virgin queens, so most of them got balled up. out of 12 nucs, i made around the 1st of july, i have 11 working like crazy and 1 was still trying to mate a queen (at the inspection i made 2 weeks ago) and i added a second deep on them because they needed it. the blue deeps are the ones I placed on top of them 2 weeks ago.








I make a lot of mistakes, it comes with my head in the could nature. but, overall I have a great nose for bees and beekeepers. I probably trained dozens of beekeepers so far and I am sure I will train more in the years to come. the guy filming me, I trained him and now he runs a nice operation with 720 last time I talked to him. I hope in a few years I can be back on the bee wagon, and run my own farm again. I made my first honey this year too with these hives, a nice full drum , or almost  and I hope to make some more this fall. my problem is I can't afford the furniture I need , in order to grow as fast as my bees would want to grow. I am about to order 20 more deeps with frames, and I know this will put me in a bind financially. if next year I get to have about 60 hives, I will definitely go get a loan from the bank and expand my bees by buying some hives from a local guy, and since I know his genetic I good, I will probably keep those queens. 



to conclude, I am sorry for the page long post. I know it is too much and I apologize to the initiator of the post for hijacking it. sorry Pyro BEE. )
I could talk bees all day long, and my wife, also a beekeeper's kid, will not do that with me ... she had enough of that growing up


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## deknow

Well, from a practical perspective, the queen side is the side you can control (save II or some clever mating trick).

Some years ago, I think there was a discussion where someone was collecting as much drone semen as possible to pool together for a breeding experiment.

It made no sense to me (I don't remember the details but someone might dig it up). I then was talking to (I think) Kersten Ebberston about something similar, amd she pointed out (which had not occurs to me) that if you want to study the queen side of the genetics, the best way to null out the drone contribution (assuming you have enough numbers in the study) is to totally randomize the drone contribution.

In any case, it certainly makes sense that focusing on the queens contribution will give you the best results, aND that some traits are combinations of traits that are disabled no matter what the "pure line" is diluted with (I think this has been seen by some with the Russians and temperament as an example). It does not follow that some traits are passed on by queens and others by drones...it is much more complicated than that.


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## aunt betty

AstroBee said:


> I do respect your 25 years of experience and that you come from a long line of beekeepers and I really enjoy reading posts from those who have really honed their craft, so please keep contributing!! However, I respectfully disagree with your statement: "the genetic features, like honey production, gentle bees, resistance to pests, etc, are transmitted exclusively by the queen." I've read the Glenn link several years ago and it supports the critical role of drones in the resulting offspring. Another thing to consider is that if the queen exclusively controlled the traits within colonies, then there would likely not be any AHB in the USA. Of course that's not the case. Also consider VSH behavior, this is supplanted into populations through insemination, i.e., from drones.


The genetic make-up of a queen comes from the parents and grandparents etc. of course , drones included, but since bees are a matriarchal society the queen is the focus when we speak of it (genetic make-up).
"You need to breed better drones" is...sexist. 
lol
j/k

Which came first? The queen? The drone? or the egg?


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## tanksbees

It would seem to me that since half of the DNA has to do with the location that the queen is being mated at and the drones present in that area, that if that location were to stay the same from mother to daughter, they would share many of the same characteristics by virtue of location, and it may be that the only obvious changes were those selected for in the queen breeding process / maternal side.

I could easily see how that might lead people to believe that the queen is solely responsible for certain features, since the male population is essentially static.


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## WilliamsHoneyBees

Larvae receive half their genetic make up from their mother and their father. Want better queens pick from your best hive and flood the area with as many drones from your best colonies as you can. Yes the drones do contribute genetics to the colony. Just look at the variations in colors of your worker bees. Some can be yellow, some dark, and some mixed all in the same colony. Many variables in just colors. The same variables exist beneath the surface in traits such as hygienic behavior, honey production, propolis, etc. There are many subfamilies within a colony. No I do not always move virgins to another yard to mate. They will fly out and meet drones from your colonies and your neighbors colonies in a drone congregation area. You can not control who she mates with unless you instrumental inseminate. I highly doubt you will have inbreeding problems in a open mating situation unless you use the same breeder queen for many years and are exclusively flooding the area with her daughters. Bring in a few new queens each year and you will be fine. Go forth and raise queens!


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## PyroBee

Thanks for the replies. Did mean to start something. Just want to learn as much as I can. Always been, if you are going to try your best then do not do it. I have been growing my hive counts this year with reputable queen sources. Hopefully they all overwinter well, and I can get started next year. At first I want to utilize them to continue to grow my hives. Maybe eventually sell some locally. Thanks


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## Michael Bush

>So some questions: drones are exactly like their queen correct? 

That would imply that all the drones are identical. They are not. They get all their genes from the queen, yes, but she has two sets of genes and each drone gets one random set. Since the drone is haploid (only has one set of genes rather than two) all of the sperm from that drone is identical since there is no other set of genes to choose from randomly...

>Workers are a combination? 

Of one of the sperm from one of the drones that the queen mated with and a random set of genes from the queen.

>So when you select larvae, it is not really ever going to be exactly like their queen. 

No.

>What percentage of larvae would be close to their queen? 

There are a lot of mechanisms built into bee biology to ensure genetic diversity. Any given egg that you are using for queen rearing has the same percentage of genes from the queen, but there is no telling if the particular gene it got for a particular trait was the dominant gene or the recessive gene. So there is no telling how much of the genes that came from the queen will control the results. The other half, of course, did not come from the queen at all. Again it's a random chance if a gene for a given trait is the recessive one or the dominant one. All in all it averages out that half the traits the offspring queen will have will come from the queen and the other half from one of the many drones the queen mated with.

>Do most move mating nucs away from the yard that has drones that you want to mate with your virgins? If so how far?

I want the feral bees out there to mate with them... so I don't move them.


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## PyroBee

I asked because everything you hear is to select from a queen that has the traits that you want. But how watered down are the offsprings going to be? From what you selected may not what you desire and then she may mate with a less desirable drone. So end result may not be exactly what you want. Is this a correct observation?


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## jwcarlson

All depends how many desirable vs. less desirable drones she mates with. Each drone, in theory, would be responsible for about 10% of the mix of worker bees. And the same roll of the dice for the queens you'd rear from her. The complexity of open mating is facinating, there are lots of videos worth watching about the subject. 

I believe deknow is Dean Stiglitz... he gave this great talk:


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## jwcarlson

And another involving the actual mating process and DCAs:


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## crocodilu911

PyroBee said:


> I asked because everything you hear is to select from a queen that has the traits that you want. But how watered down are the offsprings going to be? From what you selected may not what you desire and then she may mate with a less desirable drone. So end result may not be exactly what you want. Is this a correct observation?


in my experience, and I know some will blame me, throw stones but I do not care. I would not buy , as a hobby beekeeper , queens from a breeder. 
I believe breeder queens are the worst. as a professional, you have almost no choice, since you need to have that extra 2500 hives for almond pollination, and if you don't the boss fires you. so you buy queens from wherever you can and the cheapest you can. 

that being said, Pyro Bee, I think you should select the queen you want, and let's say she is the 100% best honey producer in the yard, 2 years in a row. that means that the drone factor is eliminated as there is NO way that in 2 years, she only used sperm from one drone, to where you can say the combination of the 2 made those great honey producing bees. couple that with hygienic behavior, and if 2 years in a row they are doing fine, I would select and graft her. that insures you that her daughters will have 50% of her genes, and that the dominant feature is honey and hygienic. so, the daughter gets 50% from her and 50% from drones , for her daughters. but if the dominant gene is honey and hygienic, her bees will have at least 0 of that , and I would go as far as to say 75%. because I assume that the drone will have at least 25% good genes. now I know this is empirical, but it collaborates with my observations during the years, and with my notes. 

now sometimes, you get the opposite, and the drone is a dud, so you might get only 25% of the features you want, but bees have a funny way about themselves, a way they regulate everything and make everything even after only a few generations. 


keep in mind, that we have been trying to select them for so many years, and great man did great things ( like brother Adam, or the buckfast bees.) yet after so many years, we still do not know much about the subject and we still did not found the best bread of bees or the best hybrid. there is nu such thing.

so I would suggest you tried to graft next year, see how that feels for you. I find it a fun activity, involve your kids, teach them about the craft and have fun. let me put it this way, when you'll have thousands of hives, you will have an employee doing that , so might as well enjoy it now that you can  

and keep records,notes. or all that selection and grafting will mean nothing. let me tell you something most of you don't realize.


off topic but it will prove a point. remember that old timer( and we all have one of those) that would say oh, I remember when I was young , things were different, were better or we made more honey back in the day. well , my dad has notes going back to 1977. so he wrote down stuff all the time, like weather, temperature, how many lbs/day the bees gathered on a flow( he had scales under hives back then and he still does).
so one evening we were at a meeting with some beekeepers, and we were talking about stuff, and one guy said, oh back in the day I used to make so much honey..etc. my dad who had a few, says Bull. you made less honey than me all the time, so I know you never made all that honey ( know each other since the 60;s  ) so he sends me home, ( we lived a few block away, to brig him his 1981, the year in question , notebook, also the year I was born  ) so I go bring it to him. well, besides weather, honey , etc, he also has queen lineage down in his books, so he does trace his queens a little bit. also feedings and because he know so many people, if someone told him how much he made, or if a buyer told him a price, or how much some guy made, he put it in his book. well, that particular year, was actually a great year ( beside my birth) my dad did great with his bees, making a few tons of honey and all his nucs worked, and he had a great fall flow, that made it to where he did not have to feed. so I bring it back, we look at the book, not only the guy did less honey, he also fed his bees more and lost some in the winter, since in spring of 82 he bought 25 hives from my dad, to split and make up his dead outs. all In my dad's book. the guy was swearing that was the best year, honey price was good, he made a killing. on the other hand, 82,83 and 84 were not so good, as my dad barely made it thru. in 1986 varroua cam in and before we knew it, my dad had 7 hives left, out of witch 4 died of AFB. I remember as a kid, burning hives in the BBQ pit and disinfecting hive boxes with Clorox and torch. he was left with 3 hives in spring of 87. he got back to about 300 by 1990, from the 3 he had left and the 20 he bought off the friend in question. he went there and picked out his 20 hives, as he know his queens, and frames. I was there with him, and I remember he said, even if they mated with his drones, they are still good stock, stock that my grandfather had, so he wanted the back. I think we made queens in 88, from my uncle's hives, as he had better luck and not lost as many hives to the mites, so his recovery was better. 

this all to say, that you can graft all you want, but without rigorous traceability and i mean on all your bees, there is not much point to going to deep into it. just graft the best hive you think will do the trick, wait at least 1 if not 2 years to see what that queen does. if they are doing fine in year 2, i would graft her and spread the gene. i have seen people graft 1 year queens, because they did great and they grafted for fall nucs, and then she never even made it thru the winter, mites and parasites killed the colony, and now he had hundreds of nucs with her daughters. that is a disaster for a beekeeper, as you know if you do not change them soon, they will die, so you have to spend extra energy now to requeen. 

so guys, it is Friday, and i am bored at work. sorry for the novel again


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## AstroBee

PyroBee said:


> I asked because everything you hear is to select from a queen that has the traits that you want.


This, in general, is good guidance. The bigger question is: why would you choose differently? You certainly wouldn't choose your worst performing queen, right? Again, in general, excluding very specific trait selection, choosing your best performing queen (or top 3) is probably a great place to begin. 




PyroBee said:


> But how watered down are the offsprings going to be?


You are going to have a hard time easily assessing this until you've reared a bunch of queens and evaluated them for a season or two. Some traits show themselves sooner than others, but in general evaluation is a long-duration endeavor. However, queens reared in a strong cell builder and well mated are probably going to do better than the average queens shipped through the mail (assuming you've got reasonable decent genetic material to start with). That doesn't mean that bringing in new genetics will have zero impact on your outcome, in fact, it may have a very big impact. However, before you start importing new traits, get the basics in hand.




PyroBee said:


> From what you selected may not what you desire and then she may mate with a less desirable drone. So end result may not be exactly what you want. Is this a correct observation?


Pretty much correct. Again, work with what you've got, practice, and build your confidence, then start to worry about tweaking the traits you feel are most important.


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## WilliamsHoneyBees

I have purchased II breeder queens from reputable queen breeders for years and don't regret it at all. My stock has improved and my hives are booming. Starting with good breeder queens (my second season) to me was better then spending years trying to improve stock using uncontrollable open mating situations. Each year I buy another round of breeder queens and flood the area with drones from my best overwintered colonies. Joe Latshaw and VP queens produce awesome breeder queens and do the work of selection and genetic diversity. I currently have breeder queens from three different sources and also do some work each season getting custom inseminations done from my best preforming colony. Selection is what you make of it and how much time you have to work on your lines. No there is nothing wrong with grafting from your best colonies but there are many many variables there that make selection for certain traits difficult and time consuming in testing. But like I mentioned before, go forth and raise queens. You won't regret it.


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## Michael Bush

> So end result may not be exactly what you want. Is this a correct observation?

Yes. And it is fortunate for us. If we had our way we would have completely bred out drone production, propolis production, swarming and hygienic behavior. We tried. We bred for as little propolis as we could get, as few drones as we could get, as little swarming as we could get and perfect brood patterns (which was selecting against hygienic behavior). Lucky for us we didn't get what we wanted since all those things, as it is, have almost led to the demise of EHB on this continent. We gave the AHB a reproductive advantage (they are swarmy and make lots of drones) and health advantages (they make more propolis and have not been bred to be unhygienic) not to mention by using treatments we were selecting for bees that do well with treatments rather than bees that do well without them. Luckily for us there is still some chaos in bee breeding that we can't control.


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## aunt betty

Great thread, should probably be a sticky.


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## kilocharlie

Thank you, Michael Bush, for setting all that straight. Post #13 is right on. Post #20 is the truth!

Pyro - most beekeepers just breed from the 3 best queens in the yard and open mate. Genetic progess takes along time this way - decades - so the advice to start with excellent stock is the first step. Buy the traits you seek from a good breeder. Re-queen the worst colonies and kill their drones, and cut out their drone brood. 6 weeks after re-queening successfully, you can stop killing drones in that colony. Drone brood from the new queen is kept.

The next steps are: 1) build your apiary; 2) to become a masterful beekeeper; 3) to become a decent queen rearing specialist; 4) to begin to understand genetics as it applies to bees.

Beyond this, one needs to begin studying genetics as it applies to apiculture rather seriously. It's not immediately clear. Traits involving multiple genes, 3rd generation traits, recessive and double recessive traits, sex-linked traits, the fact that bees sometimes express thyteloky as well as haploidodiploidy - it can get mind boggling.

Getting to the nearest college with a bee program and a resident geneticist would be helpful after reading several books. Professionals sure help straighten out the info in the books.

Then there's the topic of controlled matings...should we open that can of worms?

An area isolated from other bees could be identified with help from your club, and set up a mating area. Drone flooding then works quite well, but you still need to spend several years building up your apiary for that. 6 colonies won't do it for production of queens.

I.I. - well that's one topic that will chaffe the hydes of some other beekeepers. It is worth looking into just to size up the task and decide if you want to start learning about it. 

If you decide to, read everything you can find before you go take Dr. Susan Cobey's summer class. It's $800 plus travel to Washington and lodging and food. You'll need to already have your system - II device, CO2 system, 15X binocular microscope, syringe, and she'll probably let you use her refrigerator.. or you could go to one of the universities for that to get deeper into it. Beyond the scope of a beesource question? Probably. That's the route I'm going.

PM me if you want a reading list.


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## kilocharlie

apologies - computer meltdown and double post


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## PyroBee

Pm sent. Thanks to everyone for the information.


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## kilocharlie

OK - so PM's can pile up, so I'll go ahead and put a read list here. Too "Out there", "Over the top", "TMI"? Feel free to skip this post, no offense taken - it's for those to whom deeper study sounds cool.

1) Introducing Genetics
by Steve Jones and Borin Van Loon
This little cartoon book is a totally awesome starting place - a brief history of genetics, almost from an investigative viewpoint. It gets you ready to study genetics.

2) Double Helix
by James Watson
A look into what happened when two guys figured out a successful way to figure out the molecular code that lead to the discovery of the structure of DNA, by one of the guys that did it. A beekeeper could skip this book, a geneticist can't put it down.

3) Elemental Genetics for Breeding the Honeybee
by Dr. Ernesto Guzman-Novoa
Available from www.ontariobee.com/outreach/manuals-books-dvds
OR through Paul Kelly, University of Guelph, Honeybee Research Centre, School of Environmental Sciences, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, Ontario, Canada NIG 2W1.

4) Queen Rearing and Bee Breeding
by Dr. Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. and Dr. Robert E. Page Jr.
Difficult to obtain last I checked, unless Dr. Page has re-released publishing rights. Ask students at universities with bee programs from the last several years. This is one of the best books out there for the beekeeper with little knowledge of breeding, and for the geneticist with little knowledge of beekeeping.

5) Contemporary Queen Rearing
by Dr. Harry H. Laidlaw Jr.
A little bit dated at this point, but much still very valid. Mostly about queen rearing, but some very practical ideas about setting up a breeding program. Just seeing the photos of production setups gets one a lot closer to the scale needed for genetic work, which need not be as big as commercial pollinators nor honey production, it is doable at a sideline scale (150 to 500 colonies) if done properly. Gets in to I.I. as well.

6) Queen Rearing
by Dr. John Eckert and Dr. Harry H. Laidlaw Jr.
Out of print, but absolutely worth searching libraries for it. Of course try you rlucl locally first, but if no luck, try county libraries along California's San Joaquin Valley, and UC Davis' library would be a good bet, as well.

7) Queen Rearing 
by Dr. ??? Rutner
HELP WITH THIS ONE PLEASE  Thank you!
Originally published in German and Russian, but an English translation does exist. (I think I saw it available through a UK publisher or book website.) I have not yet tracked this one down, but it comes highly recommended from beesource contributors in Latvia or perhaps Lithuania - I'll tru to look up that old thread.

8) www.glenn-apiaries.com (don't forget the dash!)
Although Tom and Suki Glenn have retired from their I.I. queen rearing business of 35 years, last I checked they were still maintaining their website. Read all of it twice!! Much is downloadable and printable. Print it!

9) www.honeybeeinsemination.com
Dr. Susan W. Cobey's website may now have more on it than last I checked, but even then, right during / after a website overhaul, the article about a comparison of studies regarding performance of I.I queens vs. Naturally-Mated queens is enlightening. It is long - 21 pages - so don't sit down to read it when you're already tired. If you are wide awake AND have the gift of reading between the lines, she hints of many of the pitfalls that may be avoided in the Instrumental Insemination of honeybee queens. You'll probably want to download and print this one. The articles about The Cloake Board Method of Queen Rearing and Queen Banking are helpful, too. 

10) www.wicwas.com
Dr. Larry Connor's book publishing company has many good titles on the topic of queen rearing and bee sex. If you are ever within striking distance of one of his lectures, DON"T MISS IT! He's great.

11) www.bushfarms.com!
Michael Bush has made a most excellent collection of classic queen rearing literature, and posted it for all to enjoy on his wonderful, helpful website. Spend some time reading over as much of it as you can. This really helps. I think he's already given some links earlier in this thread. You ROCK, Michael!

Also, a couple of good habits to develop, if one seeks to get deeper into genetics as they re;late to bees...

1) read the 5-star, "Sticky" posts at the top of the page. Yes, some are long, but there is a lot of good stuff in them.

2) Look at the personal profiles of the more experiences beekeepers here on beesource.com Read through their old posts - they're listed! Some beekeepers just explain things very, very well for some newer beekeepers. Oldtimer, from New Zealand, is a great example. 44 years in beekeeping, been commercial - he answers questions with ease that takes groups of us younger beek's a lot of figuring and bumbling to partially guess at.

3) when reading studies, read the bibliographies or "works cited" section at the end. Can't find that work cited? Send an email to a professor or research associate at that university. Most are happy to send you the download, or to forward you email request along to someone who knows where that study or related or more current info is. This is a truly awesome time in history to be curious beekeeper / scientist! Never before has the average beek' with tons of FAQ's been able to connect with the researchers and get the specific answers in so little time.

Please, anyone else with more related, or updated information along these lines, go ahead and post updates / corrections in this thread while it's current. Thank you!


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## Michael Bush

>...the advice to start with excellent stock is the first step. 

Yes. Good genes do not miraculously appear. They have to be there in the first place.


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## Colobee

:applause: Well said!


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## JWChesnut

The discussion of drones in this thread contains an error that irritates me.
Drones are *not* identical, or even of *two* exact parallel forms (from the divided two chromosomes of the mother queen).

Recombination is the exchange of allele segments when paired chromosomes are formed in the inital stages of egg formation . The recombination rate in honeybee egg formation is very high -- 2 orders or magnitude greater than in humans. The effect of this recombination is the formation of diverse, non-identical, gametes.

The formation of zygotes in meiosis first enters the "Prophase I" stage. In this stage, chromosomes are paired closely, and segments are transfered from one to another. The transfer is not random, and is regulated by particular enzymes that cut segments at breaks (and these enzymes are expressed by genes). The recombination sites are marked by "chiasmas" at each end of the cut. In subsequent phases, the chromosomes tangle at the chiasma, and these can be observed (and counted) under a microscope -- a classic college genetics lab.

A fundamental paper on the rate and evolutionary impact of the recombination observed in honey bees is cited below in a paper by Martin Beye (1)
The parasitic cape bee (where workers lay more workers through parthenogenisis), and laying workers in queenless hives do not show recombination. This implies the rate observed in honeybee queen egg formation is of selective advantage. (4)

The papers documenting the exceptionally high rates of recombination posit two hypothesis to account for the observed rate -- 1) bee breed out of small effective population (colonies are scattered, and the queen can only fly so far) -- recombination moderates the effect of small breeding population depression. 2) diversity within the lineage is increased, and this provides higher fitness. 

Cite:
1) Exceptionally high levels of recombination across the honey bee genome http://genome.cshlp.org/content/16/11/1339.full.html
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_recombination#In_eukaryotes
3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiosis
4) Lack of meiotic recombination in thelytokous parthenogenesis of laying workers of Apis mellifera capensis ( the Cape honeybee)
http://www.researchgate.net/profile..._Honeybee)/links/544fb7c40cf249aa53da80b4.pdf


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## kilocharlie

Well, JW, I'll quote myself, while saluting you.

Professionals sure help straighten out the information in the books. 

Awesome post! And thanks for the reading list, too. I'll be printing those and laminating them.


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## larrypeterson

Thank you for this great information!!!

I have a question (or two) and please allow me to divert just a mite, no pun intended. As a new beekeeper, I would really like to know where I can purchase a "high few quality queens next spring. 

I have become a Michael Bush disciple." Last year I applied at our local Department of Natural Resources for a permit to put a few hives on the National Forrest through the summer. There are some mountain valleys that are solid wild flowers and just covered with bees. They are at about 7000 ft and I am at about 6000ft here in the utah desert. Those bees winter without any assistance and they are massive in number. My brother-in-law got stung while cutting fire wood but I don't know whether the bees are hostile or whether he molested them first. The DNR turned my application down and made some excuse about the purity of the wild specie. I really do not know whether they are just ferrel or from a more ancient gene pool. My next move is to find some of the cabin owners in the area and make a deal to put a couple of hives (mating cucs) on their private property for the summer. (More than one way to skin a cat!)

This thread is right where my head is at this point in time. Please keep the discussion going. It is "pure gold" to me.

Best wishes, LP


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## Colobee

Where you buy your queens depends a bit on what you are after. Are you trying to develop a mite resistant strain, or are you after honey/wax/propolis production? 

My Texas Buckfast line produced above average crops of honey this year ~175lbs/per. It was an exceptional year. None have them have crashed from mites (yet). Much of the aggressive behavior (just one hive) appears to have abated through supercedure. The Canadian Buckfast are in good position to overwinter.

I could recommend one breeder that I've been buying from for 30 years, but it would still be up to you to do some homework & see if their bees fit your capabilities/demands/requirements.


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## aunt betty

From what I've been seeing on a small scale...two queens from the same mother, same eggs, laid the same day...can end up being two completely different beasts after they're open mated. I don't think it's possible to simply say "buy here" and you live happily ever after. 

If we worked for a year on a list of good suppliers of queens I suspect very strongly that list would be full of "don't buy from this guy" listings and not very many "holy grail" suppliers. A handful.


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## dsegrest

crocodilu911 said:


> pryoBee, the genetic features, like honey production, gentle bees, resistance to pests, etc, are transmitted exclusively by the queen. so if you graft a queen that exhibits features you like and want populated, then your resulting daughters will have a large part of those features , if not all. the drone will only give a few characters to the offspring. there are all kinds of studies out there you can read on this. for a first timer like you , I think just getting started is a good thing. thy the grafting, see how that works out for you. worry about the genetics of it later once you mastered the process of making them. try and bread a good queen, always in her second year, so this year you could start taking notes on your hives, like best producer, best honey to brood ratio, best resistance to mites and pests...keep taking notes thru winter and spring, and before you graft make your selection.
> 
> I would make a mating yard if you have enough bees. I think maybe 5-6 hives would do, and you can give each a nice 2 frames of drone brood. you can also select them, so that your drones are of good stock. you need to do that at least 4-6 weeks prior to having queens for mating, since they need to draw out the drone brood frames, lay in them( I suggest placing them in the middle of your brood chamber, and keep syrup on them ). once you got that going, you can place out there a few hundred (200-300 mating nucs) since each queen flying will take about 10-15 drones over the period of 3-5 days to mate. they need to be mature drones, if you make your queens before your drones are mature, you will have a poor mating result. to be honest I used mating yards with 100-120 colonies and about 300-450 mating nucs. we used to mate that way because it was easy for us, but i assume you only want do do a few queens at the time, i would suggest another approach. make your mating nucs, carry them away, and bring back to your yard after 1 week. at that point have the queen cell ready to introduce, or even the virgin queens in cages for them. let settle 1 day and then introduce. if you introduce cells, then kill all of their own cells , if you introduce virgin, i would do the same, but not necessary. also i would feed at introduction. keep those worker bees busy with feed.
> 
> i have seen many ways of doing it, and i have done it several ways, and the best advice i can give you is to do it your way, read, look and ask, but ultimately do it your own way, whatever works for you. for instance now, i do natural selection, by making walk away splits. i want my bees to select themselves, and i know this way i will get the best bee for my area. after a few years of that i will go back and start selecting.
> i hope this helps


Does that mean if the queen mates with africanized bees, the daughter queens will not have AHB traits?


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## kilocharlie

Larry - Try sending a PM (private message) to some of the other beekeepers here on Beesource for a few high-quality queens. I strongly suggest that you go ahead and purchase over-wintered nucleus colonies. Remember - you are purchasing TRAITS to add to your apiary. You can combine, split, rear queens, make drones, etc. as the season and nectar/pollen flows dictate. At the very least, keep track of the queens' bloodlines.

Colo - So true. The genetic goal must be defined, and the mechanisms of the trait and it's passing to successive generations should be understood. Ironically, mite tolerance/resistance often improves honey/wax/propolis production, let alone survival.

betty - You've hit on a principle that beekeepers should know. We purchase winners, also-ran's, and outright losers when we purchase queens. That's not the breeder's fault. He/she gives the best effort, but it's also up to the bees, and random recombinant DNA, which is a game off chance. What we are asking the breeders to do is to take us to Las Vegas and win every pull on a slot machine's handle when we buy a few queens.

Nucleus colonies are a different story. Now the breeder has had time to squish the obviously poor performers, to evaluate the egg-laying patterns, to observe the buildup rates and timing, to compare pollen and nectar storage, and many other important traits.

You are not getting his/her best colonies! Those are the gene pool for future generations - his bloodlines. You are getting sisters of those bloodlines with very good, even excellent performance when you buy nucleus colonies. Purchasing a batch of recently hatched and mated queens is still a roll of the dice. You don't know the exact set of traits until a Winter/Spring has passed. You'll learn more about them during robbing/mite bloom in the Autumn.


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## Stephenpbird

kilocharlie;1312682
[U said:


> * Queen Rearing and Bee Breeding*[/U]
> by Dr. Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. and Dr. Robert E. Page Jr.
> Difficult to obtain last I checked, unless Dr. Page has re-released publishing rights. Ask students at universities with bee programs from the last several years. This is one of the best books out there for the beekeeper with little knowledge of breeding, and for the geneticist with little knowledge of beekeeping.


http://www.northernbeebooks.co.uk/newbooks/laidlaw-and-page-queen-rearing-and-beebreeding-1977/



kilocharlie;1312682
7) [U said:


> Queen Rearing[/U]
> by Dr. ??? Rutner
> HELP WITH THIS ONE PLEASE  Thank you!
> Originally published in German and Russian, but an English translation does exist. (I think I saw it available through a UK publisher or book website.) I have not yet tracked this one down, but it comes highly recommended from beesource contributors in Latvia or perhaps Lithuania - I'll tru to look up that old thread.


http://www.northernbeebooks.co.uk/newbooks/ruttner-breeding-techniques-1988/
 Sometimes the same books from Northern bee books are available cheaper from Amazon!

Some details of the Author.
http://dave-cushman.net/bee/ruttner.html


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## jwcarlson

kilocharlie said:


> You are getting sisters of those bloodlines with very good, even excellent performance when you buy nucleus colonies. Purchasing a batch of recently hatched and mated queens is still a roll of the dice. You don't know the exact set of traits until a Winter/Spring has passed. You'll learn more about them during robbing/mite bloom in the Autumn.


Tough knowing that you aren't getting a mass produced queen introduced into a nuc, isn't it? Seems like common practice. Not that it's bad, just saying.

Especially if you don't really know the source.


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## kilocharlie

jwcarlson said:


> ....Especially if you don't really know the source.


That's why we hang out here in the Queen Rearing and Breeding section!


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## kilocharlie

Stephenpbird - BIG THANK YOU! = DANKE! (Mein Deutche nicht est gut.)

Dsegrest - If Crocodilu will pardon for calling him out to the woodshed, I believe he may not have read and clearly understood JWChesnut's post #28. 

Traits do not come exclusively from the queen. They do, in the case of the Cape Bee, come exclusively from the laying workers in thytelokous parthenogenesis, but from queens, half the traits come from the queen, "half" (per bee) come from their various father drones. The confusion likely comes from the practice of keeping track of drones through recording their mother's bloodline, and from the misconception that drones are "identical" to their mothers.

AHB traits would indeed show up in the offspring of, say, Italian queens mated to AHB drones. Trust me - I have the sting log to prove it.inch:


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## larrypeterson

If I may,

Please tolerate my question even though it shows my ignorance. When I was about 12 years old, I remember a story in some periodical or maybe Readers Digest about a man who raised little dogs for stage performances. The person who was writing the story ask him how he was able to breed such tiny little dogs? Hid answer was that he weaned them at just a week old and starved them. He added that he dissolved tobacco into their milk. The writer then ask if very many died? His answer was that a lot of them died but that the ones that survived were very small and well worth the loss to get the little stage performers. I am about 72 years old so my memory may not be all inclusive but the story is basically the same as I remember.

I purchased a carniolan queen last June. I am sure she was grafted and when she arrived she was "tiny." If it were not for the blue dot on her thorax I would never have known she was a queen. I put the little cage in a nuc and 4 days later I manually released her. I meant to do away with her but just forgot about the nuc and about a month later I noticed there was big dark nurse bees in the nuc. I decided to let the hive supercede her but she is still in the nuc. All of the bees, both nurse and foragers, are way larger than she is. Now My question:

Is it possible that my little carni' queen was starved but still able to transmit her share of the genes resulting in the larger offspring? It is pretty obvious that I am a Michael Bush "disciple" but I am still very open to any intelligence about whether genetic traits can be effected by enviroment? Also, I have wondered about DNA blending along with gene selection? I would certainly appreciate input on this subject.

Thank you for tolerating me, LP


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## antonioh

Sorry everybody to return to this but I´m a little confused.

Aren´t the drones, sons of the same queen all alike ? Why not ?

True that the queen has two sets of genes ( cromossomes are in pairs, so you have two twin ranks) in her somatic cells, yes, and they are like an image in a mirror, right ? For her sexual cells, these pairs of cromossomes split apart and form only one rank. In the sexual cells you will have single iqual ranks os cromossomes, is it not ? 

So why aren´t the drones, sons of the same queen all alike ? Sorry for my ingnorance.


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## Michael Bush

A drone is haploid (one set of genes) as all gametes are (the female and male gametes). If all haploid cells were identical from the same source (your mother or father for example) then all of your siblings would be identical. They are not. Each of those gametes is a random single set of genes selected from pairs of genes. For each gene there is a 50/50 chance which of those two genes will be in that gamete. With each a random choice, the total results are very unlikely to ever be identical. So each unfertilized egg from the queen is unlikely to ever be identical to any other one.


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## Michael Bush

>and they are like an image in a mirror, right ? For her sexual cells, these pairs of cromossomes split apart and form only one rank. In the sexual cells you will have single iqual ranks os cromossomes, is it not ? 

They are not mirrors. Let's take the obvious human illustrations. Your dad maybe is heterogeneous for brown eyes, meaning he has a brown eye gene, which is dominant and causes him to have brown eyes, but he also has a blue eye gene which is not dominant. His child could get the brown eye gene or the blue eye gene and the odds of either is 50/50. Then we move to another gene, let's say hair color, and he has a blonde hair gene and a black hair gene, so his hair is black, but the changes are 50/50 that he will pass that gene and 50/50 that he will pass the blonde hair gene. For each gene you have a 50/50 chance and the resulting possible combinations are extremely large. And that is just the simplistic Mendelian model. Recent years have revealed even more complex things happening.


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## antonioh

> They are not mirrors


 You are right Michael . In fact in a pair of chromossomes each of them is different, as they have a diferent origin. And also you must account for the different ability for the expression of each gene.

Sorry for the confusion.


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## grozzie2

PyroBee said:


> I asked because everything you hear is to select from a queen that has the traits that you want. But how watered down are the offsprings going to be? From what you selected may not what you desire and then she may mate with a less desirable drone. So end result may not be exactly what you want. Is this a correct observation?


I pondered this question when I first delved into raising some queens here, and eventually I sat down and did a little math, the answer became rather obvious. This is vastly over-simplified, but, it well illustrates the point.

Go online, read, read, and read more, eventually you will come to the conclusion that fresh young queens go out and mate with some number of drones, and see numbers between 10 and 20 quoted all over the place. sooo, we simplify, split the difference, and assume our fresh young queen has mated with 15 different drones, then comes back and starts laying eggs.

The next simplifying assumption, all that sperm has been well mixed, so, every time she fertilizes an egg, it has a 1 in 15 probability of having any one of the drones as father.

Next, we graft a dozen cells and raise them. With a dozen cells, we are GUARANTEED that at least 3 of the potential fathers will not be present in the new queens. We can watch and test every possible way since wednesday, but, there is a 3 out of 15 probability that NONE of the new queens we have raised has the best combination of traits.

The solution then comes in numbers. Instead of grafting a dozen, we graft 150 from this same queen mother, and raise them all. Now we can watch and test this batch of 150 new queens every which way since wednesday, and eventually all of that data should start to show differences between various queens in the batch. We will likely then end up homing in on 10 of them as showing the 'best' set of traits we are looking for, because statistically, in this batch, we have roughly 10 young queens from each potential combination. 150 young queens, with 15 different fathers randomly spread, means we should have about 10 from each father, with all 15 sub-families represented in the batch.

And this is the crux of it all. Yes, it makes sense to choose your best queen for raising offspring, but, unless you are doing significant numbers and rigorous monitoring for various traits, it really is a bit of a crap shoot as to what you will end up with in the end. Working with small numbers in the dozen to 3 dozen range, you really dont have a large enough sample to home in on specific traits consistently in an open mating situation. Then when you allow for the scenario that each of the daughters has mated with a different set of drones, potentially from lots of other sources, the lack of numbers in the program really starts to show how fast your stock will go from 'my perfectly selected premium queen' to 'just run of the mill bees in the area'.

The numbers get even worse if you home in on one specific trait which happens to be regressive, because it takes 2 generations to confirm presence of a recessive trait. So if you want a statistically significant sample of the second generation, then you need to get 150 daughters from each and every one of those original sub-families, so gen 2 involves ending up keeping detailed records on over 2000 grand-daughters. Now the problem has increased in scale by over an order of magnitude, so you need LOTS and LOTS of equipment, combined with LOTS and LOTS of time to do the monitoring. Even if you apply various ways and means to optimize the process with lots of fancy statistical methods, you still end up looking at hundreds of grand-daughters in the pool in your hunt for 'that one'.

I spent an evening with spreadsheets doing math, and my conclusion was, at our scale here of a couple dozen colonies, a serious program of selection for specific traits is kind of a pointless exercise, because over 3 or 4 generations, our bee yard will end up reverting to the background genetic pool anyways, unless we are bringing in pre-selected stock each and every year. The other point I took from the exercise, those folks selling premium queens that are the result of a large selection program, have earned every penny of the $500 charged for those expensive breeder queens.

But, just because we dont have enough colonies to do a serious program for multi-trait selection, doesn't mean I'm going to just pick my mothers for grafting willy nilly out of our existing colonies. Ofc I'm going to choose the queen that has given us the best results. Then again, maybe not, because the bees have other ideas. This year, I had my 'best mother queen' all mapped out to use for next years spring grafts, in fact, I had my first, second, and third choices all mapped out, in the colonies, marked, ready for next spring. And during our fall final inspection, what did I find ? All 3 of those colonies had unmarked queens walking around laying eggs, so all 3 of my chosen queens have been superceeded. So, we have essentially arrived back to square one, all my records we kept this summer, apply not to the queens in the boxes, but to their mothers.

I am not going to be able to do a rigourous selection program to breed the 'super queen', I just dont have enough colonies to start down the path of statistically significant numbers, and if I did, it's doubtful I would have the time to do the meticulous testing and record keeping required. But, I will still raise queens myself in the spring, it's part of our swarm management strategy. The next round of selection we do here, comes from mother nature, who uses a rather cruel selection method, but I cant graft from a dead colony, so it's a rather firm selection method as well. We will look at our colonies in the spring, and when it's time to graft, we will pick the colony that looks best around mid april, and whichever queen is in that colony, will become the 'queen mother' for spring grafts. After the spring honey flow, we'll do another round, and whichever hive produced the most honey, will become the mother for that round. But I'm not going to delude myself that I'm doing serious selection and/or breeding, I'm just producing queens for our own management methods, on our schedule. At most, I'll have a small influence in pushing the background genetics in our chosen direction thru this exercise.


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## AHudd

Do the environmental factors help to determine which traits are expressed? Perhaps altering the odds from 50/50 to something better.

Alex


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## kilocharlie

Techincally *NO*, but unfortunately *YES*. 
*NO* in that recombinant DNA works in random. I'm not saying that it is not influenced by temperature, or other environmental factor. More human males are born during times of war, more females are born during times of peace, leading me to believe that environment does indeed have something to do with at least gender prevalence, if not trait expression.

*YES* in the way many "non-scientist" beekeeper / queen rearer selects "best" queens is to not keep track of at least the mother queen, and to consider the erroneous idea that the colony that has the most honey has "high honey production" as a colony trait.

For example: On a dry year, almost no sage flowers nor buckwheat open. A colony with a tendency to travel 5 miles to a favorite nectar / pollen source brings in a fair amount of creosote honey / pollen. Joe Beek breeds from this, his "best colony", and marks that box.

The next year is a wet one, his home-bred bees still do make some honey - more than before in fact - but the swarms he caught the previous March out-produce last year's honey champions by 75 pounds. The swarms are survivor bees that really increase hard on wet years, take advantage of a single early source of pollen like alder or Bradford pear, and go berserk on avocado, mustard, orange, sage, buckwheat, sumacs and rabbitbush for the rest of the year. Last year's "best bees" populated up in time to catch the sumacs.

So Joe Beek breeds from these very different bees, which happen to open-mate with the creosote bees' drones, and the resulting offspring have a mix of traits. Some of these offspring colonies are good at certain flowers, others are good at dry-year flowers and timing, but Joe has kept track of neither blood lines nor traits - he's throwing darts in the dark. The bees don't know what they are good at - they just do their best with what the year gives them. The results vary.

Had Joe Beek raised a bloodline of 150 colonies favoring local dry-year patterns and another bloodline with 150 colonies favoring traits that really shine in wet years, at least one of his bloodlines should produce very well, while the other hopefully survives, maybe with a little help like a frame of brood, a frame of honey, extra feeding, etc. The effect is that he rarely has a "bad" year.

He should have some genetic progress after a couple of decades just by keeping track of the mother queen bloodlines and recording the important traits.

Had he BOUGHT some excellent stock to begin with, and open-mated them with local bees, he may have realized considerably more total honey production from many of his colonies. And this large increase in honey yield would have repeated for the 2 or 3 or maybe 4 decades it would have taken him to raise his own bloodlines. How much money is that? I tremble to think of it, but it probably could have bought him a semi-truck and a forklift, and maybe some more honey room equipment. 

Those good years can really put some cash in a beekeeper's bank account. The truck, forklift, and honey room make the lean years better. It all adds up. The sum depends on the beekeeper, his practices, the bees & their genetics, the years and the weather they throw at us, the land that produces the flowers (is more of it producing shopping mall parking lots every year?), the pests and diseases, and how the beekeeper and the bees respond to the pests and diseases, and probably a lot of other factors.

The presence of mites can drastically change the performance of a bee colony, and a mite-free colony will likely out-perform a colony that fights off mites successfully twice in a year. The bee breeder should be very interested in breeding that second colony that fought off mite explosions hard twice in one year! Especially if the bloodline shows little tendency for brood diseases and nosema (both types). We must try to keep data on a level playing field, separating "mite load performance" and "beekeeper mistake performance" in our data, and separating them by yard locations, and other significant factors.


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## kilocharlie

Antonioh - As I understand - somebody please correct me here in public if I am wrong - a chromosome is a double helix, that is, a DNA molecule. Queen honeybees have 32 of them, their eggs have only 16. Dones have only 16, and their sperm have only 16 chromosomes. (Incidentally, a drone has 16 chromosomes, his sperm have 16 chromosomes - all one drone's sperm are identical to each other, but drones from the same mother are not necessarily identical to each other.

A gene is essentially a "rung" or link on that twisted DNA "ladder". This is where it gets confusing. The outside "rails" of the DNA "ladder" come apart at the middle of the "rungs", usually. But they do not necessarily re-combine with the exact same chemical. The twisted DNA ladders have a hello of a lot of "rungs", or genes. I don't know how many - it varies with each species, but its a BIG number. Mapping these genes, exactly where they occur along the DNA is called making a genotype. All (or most) of the possible chemical groups that can occupy a location are accounted for. Each chemical group that may attach to a "rung" influences a trait expression. Some traits are dominant, some are recessive, with multiple traits expressed by different chemical groups in similar locations along the DNA, some are not so clear about being "recessive" vs "dominant", but relative % expressions may occur. Some traits are expressed by multiple genes in various forms. it gets a bit complex.

Suppose there are 4 different common molecules present that could complete such a "rung". These 4 candidate molecules have different concentrations, and different propensities to combine with the "half rung" still connected to the "rail" or "half-twisted ladder". So the recombination of the DNA will make 2 new "ladders", but necessarily identical to the original, and not necessarily to identical to each other, though identical is still one of the possible results, just very unlikely when the DNA molecule is a large one, the larger, the less likely to throw a "clone".

I use this simplified "ladder" analogy that I have seen in animation from scientific documentaries, probably a bit out of date. I need to get up to date on this image's accuracy, and the current technical terms for each piece. I readily admit that I am not up to date, and that without this "ladder analogy" I am still a bit foggy on how DNA really works. 

The larger picture is cell division - both kinds (meiosis and mitosis), plus abnormal. Prophase, prometaphase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase, and cytokinesis probably all have their own influence on trait expression. If something goes wrong in any of these "phases" (cytokinesis is not a phase, but completes mitotic cell division), a trait's expression may be influenced. So a generation may not express a trait to it's fullest, but it may pass along a trait to a successive generation that does express that trait to it's fullest form.

Meiosis I and Meiosis II are different in males and females. Check out Wikipedia for better explanations than which I am capable. 

It becomes apparent that variation within a group of similarities will include an extreme or two here and there, even an outright different result occasionally (mutation). That anything is identical seems most improbable, but again, it IS possible. About like throwing bricks in the air and they fall down in the shape of a building. Possible, not very probable.


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## Kosta Zhelev

Hello! I read all the comments here and I intend to give an opinion. This is a matter which bother years and suggest to avoid unnecessary speculation. Genetic code in DNA is accurate information. Regardless of how he held a recombination, it shows a sign only if there are conditions for it. The conditions can be not only epigenetic, but also those from the environment or artificially imposed. We see only dominant traits in bees and bee colony. The collapse of the scars in generations is quite a separate issue, but it is subject to conditions. Nevertheless, there are and that there is, they occur where there is reason. So today the selection is considered much - deeper and longer genetics can not cover its needs. However, it is a solid base on which can move every coach. The genetic information obtained from the drones is a powerful factor and is characterized by its speed. Can not say the same about its stability. It comes fast, but quickly goes away. Precisely because of this, and the selection process is to constant X / crosses /. Greetings!


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## Fusion_power

Reading through this thread was like being in Alice in Wonderland when all the leaves were falling. Get a copy of Breeding the Honeybee by Brother Adam and see why the queen has an inordinate influence on the offspring. Also see why it is important to select the very best for breeding and why it is necessary to focus on a broad set of important traits and ignore things that don't matter.


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## larrypeterson

This is a great thread for learning and to assist in breeding queens to better fit what is wanted. I am still unclear how the blending out takes place. If the Africanized bee is blending into a hybridized or milder mannered bee, is this blending factor the result of chromosomal selection or is there a blending of DNA through some other process??? LP


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## kilocharlie

I spoke of the "twisted ladder" analogy of the DNA molecule. The ladder usually splits along the middle of each "rung", each rung is made of this chemical or that. Each specific chemical element in each "half rung" can combine with x number of other chemicals only. Which one that combines that location determines the exact trait expressed by that new, completed rung. Each chemical competing to fit into that location has a % propensity to adhere to the one on the "half rung", and may be in greatly concentrated quantity or sparsely concentrated. This {propensity x concentration} makes up part of trait dominance or recessiveness. Some traits prove fatal in some conditions, and are self-regulating if they do not support survival before another reproductive cycle occurs.

Mutations occur when chromosome splits incompletely (among other reasons). Where on the ladder it splits affects the outcome. This also indicates to the genetics researcher how "near" or "far" along the ladder traits are from each other.

In nature, "blending out" traits occurs at random mixing and re-combining of chromosomes, and by survival of the fittest in the conditions that Mother Nature throws at them. In breeding, it occurs when the beekeeper 1) breeds bees with the desired traits, 2) de-selects the colonies with undesirable traits by killing drones and their queen, and 3) re-queening with a queen that has desirable traits, but also by 4) survival of the fittest over which the beekeeper has only some or little or even no control.

AHB have many wonderful traits, except for maybe 4 that beekeepers would prefer otherwise - hive defensiveness, absconding, poor cold tolerance, and usurping other hives. It would take a lot of matings, trait identification, and de-selection to get an outcrossed Italian X AHB colony with all the desirable traits and none (or at least an acceptable level) of the undesirable traits. 

I have tried in the past crossing AHB with Buckfast bees, but the AHB colonies tend to raid the other bees hives, kill the queen, and move in to take over for good. I can tell you they are a PITA. I kept AHB colonies under 3 cages made of queen excluders on a cliff in a remote section of the forest so that no queens nor drones could get out. I had to arrive at the top in beekeeper gear with a harness already on, light 4 smokers, and rappel down to the ledge/cave where the little she-demons lived. I'd usually have to use so much smoke that they'd stop flying, then I'd spray them with water. I'd put a net over the entire thing, crawl in, and open the cages and hive to work them. Every last bee had to go back in the hive before I got out from under the net (battery powered vacuum cleaner did the trick). My early efforts at I.I. were not yet ready for this kind of operation, and I did not want anything greater than 1/8th AHB crosses flying around the bee yard. That all ended when the sand shifted and snuffed out the bees. I'll go get training from Dr. Cobey and get my I.I. skills up to par before continuing along that route!


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## larrypeterson

Thanx for that explanation. you are to be commended for your patience and willingness to tolerate less educated folks like me. I do appreciate your efforts and willingness to share in an unselfish way. LP


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## kilocharlie

Well, glad to help if it helps, but like Fusion Power says, I'm just Alice in Wonderland, not an expert in genetics, so read Brother Adam's book, too. He bred bees and made mead for something like 75 or 80 years. I'd suppose there is a good chance he has something to say...


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## AHudd

Yes, as larrypeterson said, thanks.

Alex


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## kilocharlie

grozzie2 said:


> ...I spent an evening with spreadsheets doing math, and my conclusion was, at our scale here of a couple dozen colonies, a serious program of selection for specific traits is kind of a pointless exercise, because over 3 or 4 generations, our bee yard will end up reverting to the background genetic pool anyways, unless we are bringing in pre-selected stock each and every year...


Well, more like 20 generations, depending on your breeding program. I bring this up just to mention that yes, if open mating your bees, *bringing in pre-selected stock every year* (preferably rotating from different breeders each year) in order to introduce desirable traits in great numbers and encourage recessive traits *should be standard practice* if one is trying to develop a bloodline. 

*Breeding a large number of colonies allows for stronger selection* for a specific trait (interpret that as DE-selection of colonies not expressing that trait). (Hint: the traits that you have in the bloodline are already highly expressed in your apiary are kept as bloodline stock. Do not de-select these! You will eventually develop an overall scoring system, and emphasize certain traits over others as conditions change over the years.)

Strong selectivity and large numbers of colonies achieves genetic goals in a shorter time period. Instrumental Insemination brings about a rapid advance toward a genetic goal. Dr. Susan Cobey developed the New World Carniolan bees in 10 years using I.I. and serious selectivity. That's lightning fast in genetics. Reminds me of the joke, "What does a slug say when riding on a turtle's back? Answer = "Weeeeeeeeee!""

*Trait testing is not as massive as you'd think*. If you visit your bees each week to 10 days, you should have a feel for which colonies are strong in which trait. Record keeping may reveal some of the more subtle trait expressions. *You're only recording from the best candidates*. Start with your best 10% of your colonies and pull the drone frames of the worst 60% and re-queen those. Inquire about traits from other successful breeders and bring in some each year, evaluate them, breed from their best.

So there is a point after all - develop and maintain bees with desirable traits such as mite mauling, VSH, high honey production for the local flora, low nosema occurence, etc., by selective breeding, trait testing, record keeping, and obtaining queens with desirable traits each year to maintain excellent stock.


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