# Queen breeding hypothetical - Make drones or queens from great stock?.?.



## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

So imagine you have a queen that can produce a colony with zero or negative mite growth (apart from severe initial infestation). Would you use her to make queens and pick drone colonies from other (maybe similar) desirable traits? Or would it be wise to make sure she produces 4-5K drones to mate with everything in the neighborhood, given they are essentially her clones?

You could also forget the part about mites and just say any exceptional quality you are actively trying to propagate after finding exceptional stock with an abundance of that trait. 

I know there are folks on here who have truly forgotten more than I know on this topic. Please break out that wisdom.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Assuming the quality you want is passed on thru drones, then you use her to make lots of queens, their drones will carry the genetics you want. If the genetics you want are passed from the queen, then you use her to make queens, because they will be what you are looking for.

In either case, if the thing you want is genetic, then you use her to make queens. The question is really, do you want those queens for what they are, or do you want them for the drones they will produce ?


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

joebeewhisperer said:


> So imagine you have a queen that can produce a colony with zero or negative mite growth (apart from severe initial infestation). Would you use her to make queens and pick drone colonies from other (maybe similar) desirable traits? Or would it be wise to make sure she produces 4-5K drones to mate with everything in the neighborhood, given they are essentially her clones?
> 
> You could also forget the part about mites and just say any exceptional quality you are actively trying to propagate after finding exceptional stock with an abundance of that trait.
> 
> I know there are folks on here who have truly forgotten more than I know on this topic. Please break out that wisdom.


Both
let her make drones for 1 yard, put her daughters in another good/better yard for mating.
Her daughters drones would also run true so they could be next years drone pool against then next best queen.
Could even use green comb and move the frames *once capped* to other hives to get higher drone count.
GG


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

grozzie2 said:


> The question is really, do you want those queens for what they are, or do you want them for the drones they will produce ?





Gray Goose said:


> Both
> let her make drones for 1 yard, put her daughters in another good/better yard for mating.
> Her daughters drones would also run true so they could be next years drone pool against then next best queen.
> Could even use green comb and move the frames *once capped* to other hives to get higher drone count.
> GG


All great points!

I knew I’d get some stuff I haven’t thought of.

I welcome more from the hive mind.


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## Marcin (Jun 15, 2011)

Both.
It takes good weather, healthy bees and great drones/sperm to produce high quality queens.
Some years back there was someone locally who had a fundraiser campaign to start raising queens for local/Chicago beekeepers "to produce local queens and not rely on commercial ones that are not suited for the area ". When I inquired what the queens were going to mate with, the answer was that there's plenty of drones around. Guess those commercial drones were good enough for those local queens.

Not to take this off-topic, but one of the first 3 book that every new beekeeper reads should be The Honey Bee Biology by Mark Winston. Honey Bee Democracy by Tom Seeley should be there too. And Honey-Maker; How the bee does what she does.
Those should provide a good start.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Marcin said:


> Both.
> It takes good weather, healthy bees and great drones/sperm to produce high quality queens.
> Some years back there was someone locally who had a fundraiser campaign to start raising queens for local/Chicago beekeepers "to produce local queens and not rely on commercial ones that are not suited for the area ". When I inquired what the queens were going to mate with, the answer was that there's plenty of drones around. Guess those commercial drones were good enough for those local queens.
> 
> ...


Nice! Thanks 👍


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

The drones would be more of a copy of the mother queen than daughter queens would be. The drones are little male queens flying around. I think the drones mated with, are at least and probably more important than the queen they mate with. The problem is getting enough drones out to be the dominate population of drones in the area.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

So while I agree both are very important, the following excerpt from am article that MSL sent me today explained this factor as well as I've ever seen it outlined:

_'Indeed, the queen is the primarily element responsible for the overall genetics of each colony. However, the result of phenotypic measurement taken on the colony corresponding to the genetic contribution of the two generations present in the colony: The queen, and her daughters, who are the workers [8,9]. The queen does not contribute directly to the performance traits, but influences them through the contribution of her genes to her workers or through her egg production, whereas workers influence performance traits directly through the different activities they perform within the colony, for example, collecting nectar or cleaning cells [10].

All these characteristics of genetic model specific to the honey bee have long been difficult to model statistically by computer scientists and statistician in comparison with other animal productions. Notably because of the presence of two distinct groups of father (Figure 1) involved in the expression of the phenotype of a colony: The fathers-of-queen group and the fathers-of-workers group [11].'_

In other words, as has already been described and experienced by most of us, a colony is only as good as the drones that a queen (no matter how stellar) has mated with.









Genetic Parameters of Honey Bee Colonies Traits in a Canadian Selection Program


Genetic selection has led to spectacular advances in animal production in many domestic species. However, it is still little applied to honey bees (Apis mellifera), whose complex genetic and reproductive characteristics are a challenge to model statistically. Advances in informatics now enable...




www.mdpi.com


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

RayMarler said:


> The drones would be more of a copy of the mother queen than daughter queens would be. The drones are little male queens flying around. I think the drones mated with, are at least and probably more important than the queen they mate with. The problem is getting enough drones out to be the dominate population of drones in the area.


That is the essence of my question. But my kindergarten ignorance on what mom and pop contribute gets in the way.

If a drone is an exact replica of the queen that laid his egg, how much of that greatness can he pass on? That kind of thing. But this is opening my eyes to things I hadn’t considered.

To the second point, I have a good deal of isolation from other beeks, but being surrounded by trees means feral influences far beyond my control.

For several years I had 3 types of bees (appearance-wise) coming from 3 different directions that would feed on anything I left outside. One of them died last winter and it’s very likely a swarm from my own bees will end up in that tree. The other two I haven’t found.

At this point if I assume 2, plus 2 unknowns, plus 1 for my brother’s feral hive, against 25ish colonies here, I think I can exert a decent influence even on open mating. Again, I may be basked in ignorance. It would not be surprising.


Litsinger said:


> So while I agree both are very important, the following excerpt from am article that MSL sent me today explained this factor as well as I've ever seen it outlined:
> 
> 'Indeed, the queen is the primarily element responsible for the overall genetics of each colony. However, the result of phenotypic measurement taken on the colony corresponding to the genetic contribution of the two generations present in the colony: The queen, and her daughters, who are the workers [8,9]. The queen does not contribute directly to the performance traits, but influences them through the contribution of her genes to her workers or through her egg production, whereas workers influence performance traits directly through the different activities they perform within the colony, for example, collecting nectar or cleaning cells [10].
> 
> ...


Difficult to model indeed.

One trait I thought I could really capitalize on with Russians is their tendency to keep charged queen cells. I noticed 2 things related to this.

1. This trait breeds out quickly. I heard Stephen Coy say this recently and I had already come to this conclusion. If 10% of your work force is Italian, they will not cooperate with keeping spare queens-in-waiting lying around (or possibly building cells to start with).

2. They may not view these pre-prepared QCs the same way we do. You might do a split with 2 QCs ready to cap (so 10-12 days from a queen emerging). They are about as likely to completely tear down both and start a new set, pushing this date at least 5 days further out.

disclaimer: My observations on this are from 2.5 summers with these bees and only a few instances of weirdness. Haven’t drawn solid conclusions as experience and sample size are minuscule.

Thanks Russ, I’ll try and give this more attention when I’m back on my laptop. I still feel like a caveman doing much typing/clicking etc on my phone. 😂


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I had the same quandary with strategy when bringing in some Buckfast queens to mix with my *dominant Carni X *italian bees. I decided to make sure there was lots of drones produced in both colonies and do a mix of larvae in each graft. Instead of trying to think it out I got lazy and just opted for the most diversity!


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

joebeewhisperer said:


> Difficult to model indeed.


True enough- the thing I took away from it is that if we want good stock, we have to remain focused on good queens and good drones- and these in abundance.

Overly simplistic I know, but it is kind of sobering to realize that this year's drones loom large over next year's queens.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Some questions that pop into my head are, "How big is your apiary?" and of course. "Are there many other bees within 5 miles?" If the answers are "Very big" and "Not many", then the drone flooding strategy is an option.

You have, in the course of a season, opportunities to make queens as well. I would start a calendar for each, drone rearing and queen rearing, and go build up an appropriate number of nuc's, frames, robber screens, and feeders.

Identifying the specific traits that are "desirable" and determining which are drone-passed and which are queen passed and selecting for subsequent generations will likely get you farther that lumping traits together as "Good bees" and "Bad bees".


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

The drones have one-half of their mother's genetics. They have no father, and so all they contain is entirely from momma, but which traits are present? It varies from drone to drone within the family.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

With 25 colonies and not very many other bees in the area, you'd likely be best off making a batch of queens from her this season, requeening all your colonies with her F1 daughter queens, and drone flooding AND raising F2 queens next year.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

joebeewhisperer said:


> If a drone is an exact replica of the queen that laid his egg,


breeding would be easer if this is how things worked
a drone is a random 1/2 of the queen just like an egg is a random 1/2 of the queen, but drones don't have a father so there is no outher 1/2... they are haploid (a single set of unpaired cromizones) but even so, there is much variation, 65,536 different chromosomal combinations to be exact... so they are not "clones" as some people think... there sperm on the other hand is (do to be haploid) a clone of the drone (a useful research traite, single drone insemstion) so in laymans land, it may be easer to view a drone as a queen's sperm cell..
but wait, there's more headake to come! as the drone is haploid the egg gets ALL for the drones DNA and only 1/2 of the queens (another reason for SDI)..



Litsinger said:


> In other words, as has already been described and experienced by most of us, a colony is only as good as the drones that a queen (no matter how stellar) has mated with.


 The use of II breeders refutes this stament.. you can push enough of a trait so that it survives a few out crosses.. it also matterss if the trait is domainat, recessive, additive ,maternal ,or paternal


Litsinger said:


> Overly simplistic I know, but it is kind of sobering to realize that this year's drones loom large over next year's queens.


or that this years queens' will create next years drones baised on the year before dones, and that effect your year 2matting and year 4 apiary performance 

so given the above statment... 
if I was in the OPs shoes. I would graft the crap out of the "golden goose" queen and create as many daughters form her as I could.. not just to serve as (hopefully) rockstar producton hives, but next years drone mothers as well, hedging against loss of the line witch is a posabuilty if you just use her for drones (assuming you not a II guy)


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

msl said:


> or that this years queens' will create next years drones baised on the year before dones, and that effect your year 2matting and year 4 apiary performance


Leave it to MSL to see my breeding conundrum and raise it. 😉

It seems safe enough to say whether relying on II or open mating, one must invest heavily in drones to have any hope of a sustainable breeding operation.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

sure...
you can't breed anything if you only control 1/2 of the equation

but you CAN select for the best you have every year with the hope the trait is stronger enough to survive one out cross an then reselect form the vairibul off spring and repeat.. thats stock selection/propagation not breeding
you won't gain anywere near as much ground as breeding, but you will be much better off then random splitting


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

kilocharlie said:


> With 25 colonies and not very many other bees in the area, you'd likely be best off making a batch of queens from her this season, requeening all your colonies with her F1 daughter queens, and drone flooding AND raising F2 queens next year.


would this plan of yours cause Haploid Diploid issues having the F2s mate of F1 drones? is that not sister brother issues.

IMO follow your plan BUT buy a Russian breeder queen for the (F2's) since @joebeewhisperer like them.

so make a pile of F1s replace a bunch of the queens needing refresh, Next year with the survivors bring in a different queen mother for the next gen leveraging from the many F1s.

GG


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

If you are drone flooding and mating your queens in the same yard, YES! They will and do mate with siblings. Generally not much of an issue the first time, but if this practice is repeated annually, you'll be seeing recessive traits sooner or later.

My new stock queens raised (last year) from stock brought in from other apiaries far away, go to a mating yard / DCA in a canyon more than10 miles from my heirloom stock. I put several drone colonies there, selected for traits to be introduced to last year's best imported queens' bloodlines.

I bring drone stock (selected for traits desired to add to the heirloom bloodlines) from other apiaries to mate with my heirloom stock in my regular bee yard nearer home.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Every 3 or 4 years you should buy some stock from a new source in order to minimize the effects of inbreeding.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

kilocharlie said:


> Every 3 or 4 years you should buy some stock from a new source in order to minimize the effects of inbreeding.


I do every year a few 4-6 then it is a slow mix of old and new genetics.

GG


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

I used to run one bloodline that were exceptionally good wax repairers. I ran another bloodline that were AFB resistant. For the most part, I would go to one yard on the 9th, 19th, and 29th of each month, and the other yard on the 1st, 10th, an 20th of each month.

Mating nuc's went to still another location - the canyon. All 3 locations were 10 to 13 miles apart from each other.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

crofter said:


> I had the same quandary with strategy when bringing in some Buckfast queens to mix with my *dominant Carni X *italian bees. I decided to make sure there was lots of drones produced in both colonies and do a mix of larvae in each graft. Instead of trying to think it out I got lazy and just opted for the most diversity!


I hear thee. I try to have a general plan, but that sometimes gets wrecked by a more convenient option presenting itself, ... so yeah, laziness can be a factor. 


Litsinger said:


> True enough- the thing I took away from it is that if we want good stock, we have to remain focused on good queens and good drones- and these in abundance.
> 
> Overly simplistic I know, but it is kind of sobering to realize that this year's drones loom large over next year's queens.


That's further out than I was thinking. Several of you have mentioned thinking about what will be producing next year's drones.  


kilocharlie said:


> Some questions that pop into my head are, "How big is your apiary?" and of course. "Are there many other bees within 5 miles?" If the answers are "Very big" and "Not many", then the drone flooding strategy is an option.
> 
> You have, in the course of a season, opportunities to make queens as well. I would start a calendar for each, drone rearing and queen rearing, and go build up an appropriate number of nuc's, frames, robber screens, and feeders.
> 
> Identifying the specific traits that are "desirable" and determining which are drone-passed and which are queen passed and selecting for subsequent generations will likely get you farther that lumping traits together as "Good bees" and "Bad bees".





kilocharlie said:


> Every 3 or 4 years you should buy some stock from a new source in order to minimize the effects of inbreeding.


Apiary will likely be about 40 by the time I get inspected, but chopped back down to 15-20 after selling nucs. So no noticeable increase in breeding material as I will try to load nucs for a population explosion in 2-3 weeks, but not keep them long enough to produce significant drones. 

Several folks mentioned the addition of new stock occasionally. I got my original Russians from Coy's in Miss in May 2019. Ordered more from them for this May, but may also order a few from Richland or one of the others. Ironically, you could get stuck with very similar stock if you don't know which year they switch up lines. I realize ordering from the same source just reinforces their genetics in my yard, kind of cancelling out any feral or other genes that may have sneaked in here. I'll switch it up some. 

I've been a little reluctant to cross this Russian with that Russian as mine are about as gentle as Italians I've kept. Figuring I might unleash the Kraken over here and make some truly mean bees. I guess that's easy enough to track down when you pop a lid and get 50 hits. 

On the general issue of controlling 1/2 the process, I think it likely I'll buy an II outfit and at least try it. Someone asked me last year why didn't I use II. I said because queens would be $200 instead of $40-45. But to exercise complete control over it, it is the next logical step. I doubt I'll have time to go II this year, but it is intriguing, assuming you have something worth passing on. 

Thanks to everyone and keep'em coming.


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## John Davis (Apr 29, 2014)

Part of the difficulty is also that, especially for a relatively new queen rearer, it is often missed that the "good" starting queen is producing a group of workers and the good colony traits are the sum of the fathers. The fertilized egg from her - grafted to produce a daughter queen - will only be from one of them so may be very different.
Choose from what you have to work with but be aware that it's a long road to good selection, record keeping helps a lot.


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## JoshuaW (Feb 2, 2015)

I simply try to work with stock that I like. My take on selection is that it generally happens by culling under-performers and over-aggressive tendencies. By the time winter comes I usually like what's in the yard(s), and the ones that overwinter to make drones in the spring have "made all the cuts" at that point (and survived my management!). I'm okay with that. Example: four Minnesota Hygenic colonies made a honey crop and have 80+ pounds for winter feed, they are gentle and have low mites after my treatment regimen, so they are definitely drone mother colonies in 2022. Virgin queens will be purchased cells from a producer using Dr. Latshaw's breeder queens. This year I'll be using one of Dr. Larry Connor's Drone Holding Colonies right in the mating yard (90 mating nucs). It seems like a lot of times poor colonies weed themselves out.


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## John Kempf (Jun 30, 2021)

@Gray Goose 


Gray Goose said:


> Could even use green comb and move the frames *once capped* to other hives to get higher drone count.
> GG


This is a practice I intend to use when I begin next year. Why does the brood need to be capped?

I am just thinking it would be possible to produce even more drones from a certain queen if one were able to move drone comb with eggs or young larvae to other colonies, but I am sure you have good reason for your recommendation.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

John Kempf said:


> @Gray Goose
> 
> 
> This is a practice I intend to use when I begin next year. Why does the brood need to be capped?
> ...


my opinion is.

Mites go into brood pre capping, so you would not be spreading mites into the other receiving hives.
Also receiving hive if given uncapped drone frames may have more places for mites to go IE one more frame of uncapped drone larvae.
Since earlier in the thread the "assumption" was this drone source hive was low in mites, hence a potential breeder. The spread would be unlikely if done after capping.
Also most hives are at their max for brood rearing, adding larvae, could result in poorly fed Drone larvae, if you add enough to over whelm the nurse bees. recall we are doing this for breeding so we do not want poorly fed Drones. 
the brood is capped in 8-9 days and would hatch in 24, so by moving most out and giving more drone comb, one could get 3 times the drones normal from one hive. If you pulled a couple frames of worker brood to make a NUC then added drone Larvae, AND the target hive was treated to be low mite , then you could move the drone frames a bit earlier. you want these drones to be well raised and the winner of the race in the DCA, so any incremental gain would help.

GG


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## John Kempf (Jun 30, 2021)

Than


Gray Goose said:


> my opinion is.
> 
> Mites go into brood pre capping, so you would not be spreading mites into the other receiving hives.
> Also receiving hive if given uncapped drone frames may have more places for mites to go IE one more frame of uncapped drone larvae.
> ...


Thanks.
Taking it to the next level as you describe implies some form of ‘cell builder’ colonies except in this case being drone builders.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

John Davis said:


> Part of the difficulty is also that, especially for a relatively new queen rearer, it is often missed that the "good" starting queen is producing a group of workers and the good colony traits are the sum of the fathers. The fertilized egg from her - grafted to produce a daughter queen - will only be from one of them so may be very different.
> Choose from what you have to work with but be aware that it's a long road to good selection, record keeping helps a lot.


I definitely fall into the new queen rearer category. Last year was my first attempt at producing more than a few. I saw some subtle differences in nutrition/size, but particularly in quality of mating as a few queens I produced for myself were superceded within 5-6 weeks. I have to get this tightened up as I think it's reasonable to assume if you buy a mated queen she should be very good for at least one season. This was only a couple of instances, and the bees put things right on their own, but other than poor weather this is likely something I could have remedied. 


JoshuaW said:


> I simply try to work with stock that I like. My take on selection is that it generally happens by culling under-performers and over-aggressive tendencies. By the time winter comes I usually like what's in the yard(s), and the ones that overwinter to make drones in the spring have "made all the cuts" at that point (and survived my management!). I'm okay with that. Example: four Minnesota Hygenic colonies made a honey crop and have 80+ pounds for winter feed, they are gentle and have low mites after my treatment regimen, so they are definitely drone mother colonies in 2022. Virgin queens will be purchased cells from a producer using Dr. Latshaw's breeder queens. This year I'll be using one of Dr. Larry Connor's Drone Holding Colonies right in the mating yard (90 mating nucs). It seems like a lot of times poor colonies weed themselves out.


All good advice. Sounds like you are killing it. Did you find a point where X number of mating nucs was about as easy to manage as Y number of mating nucs? After I got rolling and the frames were drawn, I didn't notice much difference in say 30 and 40. I'm coming into it this year with around 50, but I wondered where that line is.


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## JoshuaW (Feb 2, 2015)

Hi JoeBW,

I agree with your experience after you got rolling.

Once the ball is rolling, my opinion about the line you mention is that it seems to relate to experience, efficiency, infrastructure, time, and equipment. 
Maybe it doesn't take much time to harvest the queens, but all the other supporting activities can take a lot of time. I've become fond of saying that "beekeeping is 80% prep and 20% work".

Thanks for the compliment, but I'm not really killing it. I've driven myself and a lot of people around me almost crazy, and I've made lots of mistakes. One of the hardest lessons for me in queen rearing/beekeeping has been learning how to accept the failures.


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## little_john (Aug 4, 2014)

A brief comment ...

In post #1 the example being given is that of a single queen displaying desirable traits. That reminded me of something somebody (forget who right now) once said, which was that such an individual would be a freak of Nature. 
Question: should desirable traits of such a freak of Nature ever be the basis for an immediate large-scale breeding program ? Well, it's a point of view ...

Along a similar vein, Brother Adam's advice on such matters was to divide the entire apiary in two, and breed from the 'better' (undefined) half. I rather think he had in mind that advantageous naturally-occurring evolutionary changes develop gradually within whole populations, rather than unique traits being abruptly displayed within single individuals. Maybe food for thought ?
LJ


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

little_john said:


> A brief comment ...
> 
> In post #1 the example being given is that of a single queen displaying desirable traits. That reminded me of something somebody (forget who right now) once said, which was that such an individual would be a freak of Nature.
> Question: should desirable traits of such a freak of Nature ever be the basis for an immediate large-scale breeding program ? Well, it's a point of view ...
> ...


I do not see a good or great queen being a freak of nature,, it is what we all strive for.
Freak of nature for large scale, @joebeewhisperer is not a large scale breeding program manager.
Naturally Occurring And grafting are not in the same place at all. Making 500 daughters is not natural, Natural is 2 or 3 queens from a swarm out of a tree.

He is trying to magnify the end game for a good/great queen, out of the gate natural does not apply.

apples bananas beans and sunflowers, Putting them in the same basket does not make them related.

A brief counter point.


GG


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## little_john (Aug 4, 2014)

Gray Goose said:


> I do not see a good or great queen being a freak of nature,, it is what *we all* strive for.


It may be what you personally strive for, but not everyone. 
(Freak = "strange or unusual and not like others of its type")

GG, you're not quite getting it. So - you have a Queen, superlative in one respect - ok. But at that stage you don't know quite a lot about what may follow. For example, you don't know if that characteristic is transmissible to the next generation. Indeed, it might well be a freak event - epi-genetics, and all that. Next, you don't know what the result of the first matings will be: that characteristic might be suppressed; the progeny might not even be viable; there might be a price to be paid in the form of a subsequent vulnerability to disease, for example. And you certainly don't know what the results of subsequent matings will be.

For some peculiar reason, there always seems to exist an assumption that the sudden appearance of a highly desirable characteristic heralds a positive addition to an already well-established and otherwise unchanged phenotype. The prospect of possible retrogression never seems to enter anyone's mind.

By 'spreading the risk' as it were, over several colonies, Brother Adam's suggested method of improvement is more gradual, sure, but carries with it far less chance of failure, for it more closely approximates what occurs in Nature - needless to say, the larger the population involved, the better.

My comments about a 'large-scale breeding program' and 'naturally-occurring evolutionary changes' were intended to address the wider breeding issues involved, rather than focussing solely upon the OP's situation.
'best,
LJ


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

little_john said:


> Brother Adam's suggested method of improvement is more gradual, sure, but carries with it far less chance of failure, for it more closely approximates what occurs in Nature - needless to say, the larger the population involved, the better.


LJ:

While my opinion doesn't count for much, I think you might be on to something here- especially if the trait(s) in question we are trying to select for are 'additive' in their expression. 

Setting aside the possibilities of II for a moment, and assuming that the 'freak of nature' came from one's own apiary, it seems difficult to separate her from the population that produced her, given the fortuitous combinations that brought about the collection of traits that are embodied in the queen in question.

That said, I think it is important to keep context in view. If we are talking about a locally-produced queen in a naturally-mated setting, then it seems plain in my mind that the queen is materially an extension of her population.

If we're talking about an imported queen and or the use if II, this changes the calculus.

While I might be off-base on this, it seems to me that the former approach is more appropriate to the hobbyist/backyard scale where we are leveraging the population by propagating the upper 50% to allow our yards to be made up of the best examples of what the population has to offer. 

Whereas the latter approach might be more appropriate to the large-scale operator who is engaged in systematic queen renewals and is looking to 'catch lightning in a bottle'.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

little_john said:


> It may be what you personally strive for, but not everyone.
> (Freak = "strange or unusual and not like others of its type")
> 
> GG, you're not quite getting it. So - you have a Queen, superlative in one respect - ok. But at that stage you don't know quite a lot about what may follow. For example, you don't know if that characteristic is transmissible to the next generation. Indeed, it might well be a freak event - epi-genetics, and all that. Next, you don't know what the result of the first matings will be: that characteristic might be suppressed; the progeny might not even be viable; there might be a price to be paid in the form of a subsequent vulnerability to disease, for example. And you certainly don't know what the results of subsequent matings will be. *All true*
> ...


*Best

GG*


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

I think if I had my preference I would like to have “the golden goose” and also look around to find I have 50 of her sisters with the same dad (or 500 for that matter). Then I think we’d have a much better than average chance that some of those would be exceptional.

But my understanding of this is truly kindergarten level. We grew up farming a few cattle, chickens, etc. Had some rudimentary genetics in school, enough to know the difference between dominant, recessive and such. But that’s a far cry from attempting to control any part of the equation.

As far as scale, we are probably talking about <200 queens for the whole season. So I’ll not be claiming to have “saved the bees” anytime soon. But if I hit on something extraordinary, you guys will hear it first, at which time you can check my methods and documentation in ways that would never occur to me naturally. Really just want to make better queens
this year. Much better queens would be, well, much better.


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## JoshuaW (Feb 2, 2015)

joebeewhisperer said:


> Much better queens would be, well, much better.


If you don't mind, please allow me to suggest: focus on young nurse bees in the cell builder. You really can't have too many, and while learning it's better to have too many than too few. If in doubt, SHAKE EXTRA! After you get the feel of it, then try cutting back to a more efficient level. Steve Tabor mentioned in his book "Breeding Super Bees" that it takes 400 nurses to raise a queen. That comes to about one frame of sealed brood for every 10 queen cells you want finished, and you may still have to shake extra just to make sure.

I don't recall the study, but the point was that "queens with inferior genetics raised in a superior environment will be better than queens with superior genetics raised in an inferior environment."

And to answer your original post's question, I would focus on making queens off great stock, and drone production will get taken care of itself.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

JoshuaW said:


> If you don't mind, please allow me to suggest: focus on young nurse bees in the cell builder. You really can't have too many, and while learning it's better to have too many than too few. If in doubt, SHAKE EXTRA! After you get the feel of it, then try cutting back to a more efficient level. Steve Tabor mentioned in his book "Breeding Super Bees" that it takes 400 nurses to raise a queen. That comes to about one frame of sealed brood for every 10 queen cells you want finished, and you may still have to shake extra just to make sure.
> 
> I don't recall the study, but the point was that "queens with inferior genetics raised in a superior environment will be better than queens with superior genetics raised in an inferior environment."
> 
> And to answer your original post's question, I would focus on making queens off great stock, and drone production will get taken care of itself.


Thanks! 😃

In most cases I added nurse bees. I did several starters in 5-frame EZ Nucs with considerably more bees than would fit in the container.

Also cut back on grafts placed in any one starter. Really wanted the starter to be able to finish them strong if I got too busy to move them.

A few times when I was crazy busy I’ve grabbed a grafting frame, pulled out larvae from a good colony, grafted 10-12 (on a lid), and set them directly in a queenright finsher over a queen excluder (2 deeps or 1 deep/2 mediums). They would get picky, but of the few times I did it, it only washed out once. They always made a few good cells.

Keep them coming everyone! 😃🐝 I feel like I got to mid-kindergarten last year, but it’s the 5% here and there that’ll bring in the nice queens this year


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Joe - If you are going to try I.I., focus first on increasing your apiary up to about 40 to 60 strong colonies - not including nuc's. You'll need the resources.

Unless you go take Dr. Cobey's classes on I.I., or hang out with Dr. Joe Latshaw, you'll likely spend 2 or 3 years just getting I.I. down, that is assuming you have queen rearing down pretty solid already.

The beast is getting drone calendar working and queen rearing calendar working, then synchronizing into one schedule. Do not expect things to go like clockwork - they won't, so be ready to adapt. Imagine my horror when I had set up a Michael Palmer "Bee Bomb" Cell Raiser colony and found on grafting day that the queen mother had not laid any eggs because the new combs were not drawn out far enough! I drop kicked and went with my 2nd best queen, a day later.

On paper and using your imagination, go through the steps of drone rearing, queen rearing, nucleus building, as if everything DOES go according to plan. If open-mating, try to figure between 15 to 50 drones per queen flying in your DCA (figure 250 drones per drone colony - you'll be killing drones not selected by using them for mite inspection or freezing). I try to do a drone colony per 5 or 6 queens, unless I have an extra frame of drone brood in there (which I recommend) - you can easily quadruple the number of drones to maybe 800 to 1,000 drones in a Drone colony, if it is busting-out strong.

I.I. mating is right at 20 drones harvested the day before queen insemination day. The drones need to have been marked for which colony and which day they hatched out. They, like the queens, are kept in cages except that brother drones go into large cages that hold 50 drones + 150 to 250 attendant workers and lots of queen candy. I hatch my queens out in 5-hole cages in preparation for I.I.

Think about the labor, even do a "Dry run" - set up the grafting tent, get the tools out, go through the motions as if you were actually grafting the little wormmies into the queen cell cups.

Make up your calendars for drones and queens separately, then superimpose them onto a single (large) calendar sheet. If you are running, say, 20 queens, go and practice the motions like an actor doing a dress rehearsal, planting queens cells into nucleus colonies, try to get an estimate of the time it will take. Even video yourself - just for your own use. I doubt its going to hurt. Don't just do this once, take it seriously as though you'll be performing at Carnegie Hall. It will all be so much more familiar when you go through the actual (learning curve) first run.

You can make some progress trying to do I.I. on a worker female! She's not going to look the same, but you'll get experience inserting the hooks, adjusting the apparatus, controlling the CO2 + air mix, knowing the steps.

Read Tom & Suki Glenn's website. Tom used to do this full-time, and his model is one of the best out there. www.glenn-apiaries.com (don't forget the dash)

Don't worry about first year success. Just learn and do, watch Sue Cobey's video, read old I.I. threads here on Beesource, and like a screenwriter, revise, revise, revise.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Oh, yes, read Introducing Genetics by Steve Jones and Borin Van Loon. Also get a copy of Queen Rearing And Bee Breeding by Dr. Harry Hyde Laidlaw, Jr. & Dr. Robert E. Page, Jr. 

It will boggle the brain cells at first, but as you read and re-read, it will start making a lot of sense.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

kilocharlie said:


> Oh, yes, read Introducing Genetics by Steve Jones and Borin Van Loon. Also get a copy of Queen Rearing And Bee Breeding by Dr. Harry Hyde Laidlaw, Jr. & Dr. Robert E. Page, Jr.
> 
> It will boggle the brain cells at first, but as you read and re-read, it will start making a lot of sense.


Thanks for all that! 

I may not get to I.I. this season, but it's likely I'll buy up the stuff. May even play around with it. That's a great idea on the CO2. That probably concerns me as much as anything, apart from sterilization, sterilization, etc. 

I've been playing/practicing music for 4 decades, so I'm quite accustomed to doing something poorly hundreds of times before I'm slightly better at it. 

Pretty much like everything in life.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

For anybody even thinking about II, then you really need to take an hour and watch this.






I have at times pondered the idea, debated the effort vs the potential reward, thinking about how much driving it would save as compared to setting mating nucs into a yard that's an hour drive from home, half of which is up a bumpy old logging road unused for that last 5 years. After watching this, my conclusion is, the isolated yard way out in the bush is a lot of work, but trivially easy compared to doing II.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

I got mine from https://buckfastqueen.com/store, it compared well to the Apis Engineering and
Schley units I handled In class
stay away from the 3d printed units, I am sure a master could make them work, but the controls on the one I saw at class and the one I had started to print were very ruff.. not smooth, bunch of flex led to dead queens.

I took this class in 2020...looks like the price went up, I was $300 when I did it.https://courses.cpe.asu.edu/browse/sols/courses/instrumental-insemination-inperson
the down fall was at least in my case the class was mostly people who shouldn't have been there, hobbyists with 2 hives that had never grafted or even caught queens.... one person had never handled bees at all.. so there was a time suck from them. I had watched every video and read everything I could find on line, set up my gear and played around with it and spent time visualizing (daydreaming) about the processes.. so I got what I needed out of it and did well, most of the others did not.. 
I will say having a few hours (lunches etc )to shoot the **** with some one who has a PHD in honey bee genetics was epic for me
and then the gear sat idle in 2021
so what happed? well some of you have seen my mite bomb video... there went the breeders, and I got a call in late july (after I had made my last catch of the year and the drones were being tosses form the dearth) that my VSH breeder was ready to ship....uggg



grozzie2 said:


> the isolated yard way out in the bush is a lot of work, but trivially easy compared to doing II.


It important to note that the 2 don't replace one another,, they work together. The queens' you II, produce the daughters you place in the iso yard, those daughters are your production queens/ drone mothers
(Unless your in Poland were the use of II production queens is common)

I have an Iso yard, but its a 5 hr round trip... not going to use it any time soon


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

grozzie2 said:


> After watching this, my conclusion is, the isolated yard way out in the bush is a lot of work, but trivially easy compared to doing II.


Yes, I watched this a few months ago. I've seen several, but this was definitely a good one. I remember him saying that he spent 2 years failing at it. If memory serves he said the sterilization was key and was one thing he was probably not doing well in the beginning. I'd definitely watch it again before starting the I.I. journey.


msl said:


> I got mine from https://buckfastqueen.com/store, it compared well to the Apis Engineering and
> Schley units I handled In class
> stay away from the 3d printed units, I am sure a master could make them work, but the controls on the one I saw at class and the one I had started to print were very ruff.. not smooth, bunch of flex led to dead queens.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the links and info.

I figured there would be a huge difference in equipment. I can again liken this to a musical instrument. A person with 10K hours of practice can make actual music with a subpar instrument, much easier than a novice can take an expensive instrument and do the same. A buddy of mine bought an outfit from Ukraine (or near region) and I looked them over. But this is something I'd definitely shop for after seeing one in action, in person. Units of good quality appear to be several thousand USD, but I'd be inclined not to do it until I can fork out the money for excellent quality. I'd need all the help I can get. 

I would likely take an in-person class. Might even visit the guy from the video @grozzie2 mentioned. I think he is in Gallatin which is <2hrs from home.

I agree that unless you had a crazy good market lined up to take breeders for hundreds of dollars, that I.I. is probably not going to replace open mating for me. But the idea of having some control over the top level and semi repeatable results is intriguing.

Keep them coming folks. I get something out of every one of these, and other folks will benefit as well. Thanks!


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

joebeewhisperer said:


> I figured there would be a huge difference in equipment. I can again liken this to a musical instrument. A person with 10K hours of practice can make actual music with a subpar instrument, much easier than a novice can take an expensive instrument and do the same. *A buddy of mine bought an outfit f*rom Ukraine (or near region) and I looked them over. But this is something I'd definitely shop for after seeing one in action, in person. Units of good quality appear to be several thousand USD, but I'd be inclined not to do it until I can fork out the money for excellent quality. I'd need all the help I can get.


is he using his gear every day of breeding season?
talk him out of 2 or 3 2 day slots and use his stuff. there if need be
if you like the results then drop the dimes
If the 2 to 4 days a year get you 6-10 queens maybe it works for a while .

GG


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Gray Goose said:


> is he using his gear every day of breeding season?
> talk him out of 2 or 3 2 day slots and use his stuff. there if need be
> if you like the results then drop the dimes
> If the 2 to 4 days a year get you 6-10 queens maybe it works for a while .
> ...


I like the way you think!😃

But he’s on a different coast. This was a deal he ran up on for 300-500 (don’t remember exactly).

But you’ve opened my eyes to something else. What do I tell the 10-12 Berkshire around here when they want to borrow my $$$ rig? Lol


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

joebeewhisperer said:


> I like the way you think!😃
> 
> But he’s on a different coast. This was a deal he ran up on for 300-500 (don’t remember exactly).
> 
> But you’ve opened my eyes to something else. What do I tell the 10-12 Berkshire around here when they want to borrow my $$$ rig? Lol


I think you mean "Rent" the rig, Oh and the cleaning an sanitize fee...... classes......
so get a really good rig, rent out time slots, sell incremental supplies, until you have it free and clear then decide if the hassle is worth continuing. or do a share crop deal, 1 of 5 II queens they build are yours, drop in the diversity drone yard,
when the dude or chic comes along that has the gift and does a great job, hire them to make 10 or 15 for you. then sell Il queens for 400-600 bucks..a pop.

this needs to be done to increase cash flow, best way, is if you are in your rocker with a beer, while it is going on.
Can't imagine you in the chair doing II for 8 weeks 7 days a week 14 hours a day. Has to be room to "encourage" others to learn and get better. $$$$ for a small fee of course.



GG


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Gray Goose said:


> Has to be room to "encourage" others to learn and get better.


What do they say, _'A friend with an II rig is better than owning an II rig'_? Or was that a boat? I forget...


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

This may be a _really _basic question for this thread, hopefully, you will forgive me for that.

My impression, based on what I have read and seen, is that II queens are really not intended/able to be "colony" queens, but rather sources for subsequent queen rearing. Is that correct?


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

Make drones or queens from great stock?
My 2 cents :
Agree you need to concentrate on both.

From a practical point of view at the start of the program
it sure is easy to make lots of drones and not easy to make lots of queens.
It sure doesn't take the infrastructure to make lots of drones as it does with making lots of queens.
Virtually no equipment preparation lead time necessary to make lots of drones like there is for queens where drawn comb in mating nucs is the difference between success and failure, as is the ability of the mating nuc to have a fairly self supporting hive population to start with and continuing through the mating season.

A few years in, raising larger numbers of queens will be more efficient(= easier & higher success) as the knowledge, timing, procedures, infrastructure will be largely in place, as well as a developing market for the product.
No sense making them if you can't use them or sell them all.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

Lee Bussy said:


> This may be a _really _basic question for this thread, hopefully, you will forgive me for that.
> 
> My impression, based on what I have read and seen, is that II queens are really not intended/able to be "colony" queens, but rather sources for subsequent queen rearing. Is that correct?


I think that's true for most commercial operations or sideliner queen rearing operations, but maybe some hobbyists might use them for production? Maybe the expense involved prevents that for the most part, but I as a hobbyist did one year purchase an II queen and just used it for production as that was before I ever did any real queen rearing. Back then, it didn't work out so well, they removed so much brood they didn't do well at all. I think back then they were looking so closely for brood removal that we had bees that removed both good and bad brood. Not sure how it's working out now a days because my experiences with it were long ago.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Gray Goose said:


> I think you mean "Rent" the rig, Oh and the cleaning an sanitize fee...... classes......
> so get a really good rig, rent out time slots, sell incremental supplies, until you have it free and clear then decide if the hassle is worth continuing. or do a share crop deal, 1 of 5 II queens they build are yours, drop in the diversity drone yard,
> when the dude or chic comes along that has the gift and does a great job, hire them to make 10 or 15 for you. then sell Il queens for 400-600 bucks..a pop.
> 
> ...


Everyone needs a biz Mgr. I can always count on you for “the money shot”. Lol


Litsinger said:


> What do they say, _'A friend with an II rig is better than owning an II rig'_? Or was that a boat? I forget...


Perhaps I should look around. .... maybe I already have a friend with a fancy II rig. Or perhaps someone who could potentially be a friend. Hmm... 🤔


clyderoad said:


> A few years in, raising larger numbers of queens will be more efficient(= easier & higher success) as the knowledge, timing, procedures, infrastructure will be largely in place, as well as a developing market for the product.
> No sense making them if you can't use them or sell them all


Appreciate all that. Years ago I rented a log home mill from an older mad genius sort of machinist/inventor. I once asked if we could mill logs in hexagons, octagons, etc. He said, “You can MAKE anything. Question is, can you SELL it?” Never forgot that one.

Last year I started with almost zero experience in the queen rearing thing. I had done splits, caught batches of virgins as they emerged, and a few dismal grafts. I had trouble getting comb drawn (ignoring fundamentals I already knew) and sacrificed several queens to poor situations. By mid-season I was running 40 mating nucs and making other bone-headed mistakes. But warm weather is forgiving.

From a marketing perspective, I missed out on a ton of local sales not having queens in late-March early-April and I’m now trying to time dropping some partially-drawn drone comb in some brood nests to try and force the early drone issue. But we live with a shorter growing season than surrounding valleys, so I may move a couple of drone makers into the valleys.

So still on a tiny scale, but I know what it now takes to manage this amount. Also trying to step back and figure how close to bee obsession I’m going to let this year get. Last year most daylight hours I wasn’t at work, I was working something bee-related.

Thanks!😃 Keep them coming!


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## 30WCF (Dec 9, 2021)

This might be dumb, but here goes..,
If Johnny has 9 hives and takes away two, how many—————————train wreck
But wait, there’s more. 
Let’s say you have a good queen, are her daughters genes likely good? We assume so, but there may be some trial and error. 
I didn’t say that daughter was a queen. Although this would be hard to control who is laying, but let’s take our 9 hives and create one laying worker hive from a good queen. Would they make honey, probably draw a little comb, do all the things bees do…except for survive? Let’s feed that hive a frame of larvae or capped brood every other week from 7 of the other hives to keep it alive and kicking out drones from good queen’s daughters.
Now that leaves one of Johnny’s nine hives. That hive is making queen cells. 
Would the hive making queen cells almost be forced to mate with drones from the laying worker hive if it was fed frames of eggs to keep it going with some females. Maybe (1) every week, maybe several frames a week. I don’t know, maybe you couldn’t sustain a laying worker hive if you tried. 
Just thinking out loud in text.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Number of problems, but one item for you to research is the competetive abilities of laying worker drones. They dont tend to "get lucky" on the open market!


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

IMO
laying worker has drones in worker cells, bullet shaped capping's, smaller stunted, poorly fed.
and IMO queen goes away to prevent in breeding. so local drones are the least important.
And the queens daughter is one patra line out of 15-30, the good hive is a collection of all, the laying worker is one patra line.

And as this is not a standard it must not be the optimum method of drone rearing.
keeping has been around since before the US was settled, many aspects are not changed form the late 1800's

keep up the thinking, almost all gain comes from this .

GG


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## 30WCF (Dec 9, 2021)

Yeah, just a though.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

30WCF said:


> Yeah, just a though.


I agree that thinking outside the box puts some good ideas on the table. I always tell the folks at work that I'm not married to any idea. So I just blurt out madness and they pick one out now and then. But it's important to have that environment so that odd idea doesn't get discounted when it is the one that will make the money. 

My limited experience with laying workers has been that once 2-3 start laying it's bedlam. They lay 5-6 eggs in a cell and some confused workers try and pick a favorite, destroy the others, all the while fighting the urge to become a laying worker herself. However, I've heard of people doing something very similar where they had a single, irreplaceable line and the queen was squished or otherwise perished. But as @Gray Goose said, each of these workers that are going to lay drone eggs are only 1/2 the mother queen, so I think it was done in desperation. 

It does make me wonder about inducing a particular worker to become a laying worker though. And the ramifications of doing this if you were using I.I. It's a bit like, how do I make the drones I want, all the way back to the egg. 

Keep them coming!


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## Balus Creek Bees (Aug 14, 2021)

joebeewhisperer said:


> ... If a drone is an exact replica of the queen that laid his egg, ...


A drone is NOT an exact replica of the queen. It can't be. It has only half the genes that the queen has (queen has 32, male has only 16 since the egg is unfertilized). Each egg the queen creates have a mixture of her 32 chromosomes, but only 16 of them. And not all drones that are produced are replicas of each other. They each get a half of the queen's genes, but not the exact same set. However, the drones sperm are all genetically identical to the egg that the drone grew from, since all of his genes go into his sperm.

Honey Bee Genetics PerfectBee


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

joebeewhisperer said:


> Or perhaps someone who could potentially be a friend. Hmm... 🤔


I was hoping to volunteer you to buy one so that all your Beesource friends (present company included) could come down and 'help' you use it! 

Kidding aside, this seems like something that might be great for a bee breeding cooperative or local bee club who is serious about bee breeding could invest in.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

RayMarler said:


> Maybe the expense involved prevents that for the most part...


And I've read these Breeder queens are like the proverbial goose who lays golden eggs as referenced above- you want to keep her laying as long as possible, so you baby her like you do the 63 split-window Corvette that you found parked in your neighbor lady's garage.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Litsinger said:


> I was hoping to volunteer you to buy one so that all your Beesource friends (present company included) could come down and 'help' you use it!
> 
> Kidding aside, this seems like something that might be great for a bee breeding cooperative or local bee club who is serious about bee breeding could invest in.


It would just about have to be a few of you guys or the 2 other beeks I know that would take care of it.

Your comment made me ponder contacting a local club. Then I remembered what Dad would say when someone asked him if he ever loaned chainsaws. “Only if they promise never to bring them back.”😂


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Well it is official- Sue Cobey says, "It's all about the drones."

This is quite possibly the best basic presentation of resistance breeding that I have seen- well worth the 45 minute investment in my very humble opinion- touches on many of the good points raised in this thread:


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Thanks for that link Russ. So much in there for any kind of breeding, let alone the complications and implications that come with instrumental insemination.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Litsinger said:


> Well it is official- Sue Cobey says, "It's all about the drones."
> 
> This is quite possibly the best basic presentation of resistance breeding that I have seen- well worth the 45 minute investment in my very humble opinion- touches on many of the good points raised in this thread:


good utube Russ.
I did get a lot of information for it

GG


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Gray Goose said:


> good utube Russ.
> I did get a lot of information for it
> 
> GG


I was searching for “It’s all about the drones” with Sue Cobey earlier this evening. Passed right by this one. But I did take in some of her demo stuff from 8 years ago and a couple of lectures. Probably get to this one tomorrow as they’ve now raised our forecast to 13F. I’m not as crazy about 13F as I was in my teens. Seems a bit reckless to stick your head out. 

Still have to feed and water some stuff though.


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## Lee Bussy (May 28, 2021)

joebeewhisperer said:


> they’ve now raised our forecast to 13F.


Goodness! It's 22 now and will be 61 today. Pack up and bring your bees up here. We can have a whiskey jam out in the quonset.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Lee Bussy said:


> Goodness! It's 22 now and will be 61 today. Pack up and bring your bees up here. We can have a whiskey jam out in the quonset.


It’s 10.2F this morning (Sat). Supposed to be a very slow climb to low-50s Tues. I could drop the mic there, but should probably interject bee stuff. 🐝

The hives are around the freezing point on top of the topmost frames. ❄


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

OK, so Joe - just work on queen rearing this year and next. I'd suggest reading Oldtimer's thread up in the "sticky" section about queen rearing without grafting, a.k.a. the "Cut Cell" Method. He gets better % mated queens using it. Your immediate goal is to increase your apiary. Also read David LaFerney's thread about Joseph Clemens' method of making a few queens at a time all season long using nucleus boxes.

My home-made I.I. rig is almost done - I need to get the micro-adjuster parts (for the hooks) down at Harbor Freight. They come off a machinist's dial indicator stand with a magnetic base. The cross-bar has a ring-shaped spring with a screw on it that acts as the micro adjuster. I'll also buy a Harbo syringe. Most who have used several different syringes think its the best.

I'll get some expert computer help and post some pictures of my I.I. rig when it's done. You will be able to make your own and start playing with it and practicing, reading, watching videos, etc. Then in a few years, you can go take Dr. Cobey's class, although there are now plenty of qualified teachers. 

From what I've been getting, learning to extract sperm from the drones without getting the mucus into the needle is paramount to success. Also learning to get the syringe needle (glass pipette, actually) into the sting chamber *and under the valvefold* is the other part that is hard. 

Rock-solid queen rearing comes first, I.I. will come later. Meanwhile the best advise is to learn David LaFerney's method of small-scale queen rearing using 1 or 2 nuc' boxes every few days making 5 to 15 queens at a time all season long, and Oldtimer's Cut Cell method. This will bring your apiary up to the point where you can start using Michael Palmer's "Bee Bomb" Cell Builder colonies and raise 45 to 48 queens at a time after you have 60 to 80 strong colonies.

You'll acquire skills like attaching number discs, trait identification routines, record-keeping methods that work for you, production drone rearing, calendar making for drone and queen rearing, cutting and planting queen cells BEFORE the first queen hatches, and a bunch more.

Yes, an isolated mating yard for naturally-mated queens is a good thing. Combining that with I.I. is awesome. At first your I.I. queens will likely be a spotty thing - many will probably be rejected early in their careers as queen momma. But some will lay enough eggs to graft from and continue your efforts at a breeding program. Meanwhile, it will be nice to have plenty of naturally-mated queens in a queen bank hive waiting to step in and play back-up quarterback. Over time, I.I. skills will improve and the Instrumentally-mated queens will show better rates of success.

As your apiary grows, drone flooding will work better and better, especially after you have a bloodline that is well-established to the point that you are de-selecting the undesirable traits out of your heirloom stock.

I love your enthusiasm, and your insights comparing certain aspects of beekeeping to the music business tells me you'll be around for a while


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Oh, yeah, I forgot. Once you have queen rearing down solid and you are looking into a breeding program, it's time to get some of the best stock you can obtain (in the direction of your genetic goal). Don't try to re-invent the wheel. You need to have the traits that you are looking for present - something can't come from nothing. 

Your efforts will be in quantifying trait expression, adaptation to your locality, record keeping, and eventually de-selecting unwanted traits. Meanwhile, just concentrate on staying equipment & supplies ahead and queen rearing skills.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

@joebeewhisperer:

I thought of this post this afternoon as I was reading about epigenetic effects in honey bees:

From Testing the kinship theory of intragenomic conflict in honey bees (Apis mellifera), the study authors note:

_We tested the hypothesis that honey bee worker reproduction is promoted more by patrigenes than matrigenes by comparing across nine reciprocal crosses of two distinct genetic stocks.
As predicted, hybrid workers show reproductive trait characteristics of their paternal stock, (indicating enhanced activity of the patrigenes on these traits), greater patrigenic than matrigenic expression, and significantly increased patrigenic-biased expression in reproductive workers. These results support both the general prediction that matrigene–patrigene conflict occurs in social insects and the specific prediction that honey bee worker reproduction is driven more by patrigenes. The success of these predictions suggests that intragenomic conflict may occur in many contexts
where matrigenes and patrigenes have different relatednesses to affected kin._

While the scope of the study was on epigenetic effects related to change of colony state (i.e. queenless versus queenright), it does illuminate an intriguing thought about intragenomic conflict in eusocial insects and suggests that drone effects might have an outsized influence on specific trait expression - such as aggressiveness.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Litsinger said:


> @joebeewhisperer:
> 
> I thought of this post this afternoon as I was reading about epigenetic effects in honey bees:
> 
> ...


well Aggression is a Yang trait from the yin/yang realm, so I would have expected that Males carry the Aggression trait.
As well nursing and raising young is a Yin trait, likely carried by the Queens. 

GG


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Gray Goose said:


> I would have expected that Males carry the Aggression trait.


@Gray Goose:

Saw this question in the August 2022 ABJ and thought of your hypothesis. At least based on the research by Dr. Guzman-Novoa and his team, looks like your hunch is right.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

One of the observations I may get to watch with my queen mating project this summer:
- I want to see if the offspring of my queen #10 (extremely mild) when affected by moderately defensive drones originating from the VSH queen #1 will be LESS mild.

I have no idea what proportion of the local drone coverage will be from #1.
However, it is significant enough to show itself in at least few cases.

Of interest, the vendor who sold me the VSH #1 (two summers ago now) - indicated he discontinued the line due to its feistiness.
I can guess there could be customer complaints - coming from people assuming that all bees are like commercial Italian/Carni bees (mistakenly).

So, this #1 queen is of especial value to me now - she is the end of the line.
I hope she holds on for another winter.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Litsinger said:


> @Gray Goose:
> 
> Saw this question in the August 2022 ABJ and thought of your hypothesis. At least based on the research by Dr. Guzman-Novoa and his team, looks like your hunch is right.


May or may not be of importance - but the article clarifies that their conclusions are only applicable to European/Africanized hybrids.
Euro and African bees are rather distant cousins in general.

But also, the Euro-side itself has very defensive, distinct lineages.
So unsure if this is by design OR by oversight, but the Euro bees, somehow are assumed to be a monolithic and uniformed group - not true (not even in the US).

And so to corroborate the published findings, the same, consistent result should be repeated on Italian/Carni queens and AMM drones trials (select AMMs from defensive lineages). This can be practically done too, btw.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

GregB said:


> May or may not be of importance - but the article clarifies that their conclusions are only applicable to European/Africanized hybrids.


Good point, Greg- should have added that to my commentary. Thanks for the assist.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Here is an example for defensive Euro-bees.
So much for mild Euro-puppies (where AHB is not even present to speak of).
Enjoy that. 

(160) Пчеловодство (Злые пчелы) - YouTube

Comments under the video confirm that the extreme defensive occurrence is not a rarity.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

GregB said:


> Enjoy that.


One doesn't need Google Translate to get the message here!


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

GregB said:


> Here is an example for defensive Euro-bees.
> So much for mild Euro-puppies (where AHB is not even present to speak of).
> Enjoy that.
> 
> ...


Recently read a paper from Panama (I think it was Panama, or maybe Costa Rica), comparing Euro lines and Afro. Don't recall the exact numbers but it was something like 75/25. 75% of Afro colonies were notably more aggressive while 25% were mild, and vice versa for the Euros. 

A good % of the Euro lines were measurably more aggressive than many of the Afro. The upshot was that they thought it wouldn't be a hard trick to select for milder Afro bees, but it turned out the beekeepers there liked the defensive bees, since it prevented _human_ predation! Can't forget to calculate the human factor!


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

GregB said:


> Here is an example for defensive Euro-bees.
> So much for mild Euro-puppies (where AHB is not even present to speak of).
> Enjoy that.
> 
> ...


About halfway through I cracked up, as he casually and hopelessly puffed a few useless puffs of smoke in the air. I'd be using great clouds by that point.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

AR1 said:


> About halfway through I cracked up, as he casually and hopelessly puffed a few useless puffs of smoke in the air. I'd be using great clouds by that point.


They in the comments stated - smoke was NOT working and if only making them even more angry.
In case you did not catch that - the bees were attacking the smoker itself.


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

GregB said:


> They in the comments stated - smoke was NOT working and if only making them even more angry.
> In case you did not catch that - the bees were attacking the smoker itself.


The Russian-to-English subtitle translator didn't mention that.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

AR1 said:


> The Russian-to-English subtitle translator didn't mention that.


Yes; some of it gets lost in translation.

Basically, smoke not working - this is where these bees must go.
A sign of truly nasty and dangerous bees.

A common opinion of those bees - some AMM hybrids.
True AMM are supposed to be responsive to smoke.
But some hybrids are plain nasty (akin to AHB/Euro hybrids - just the same).


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Litsinger said:


> @Gray Goose:
> 
> Saw this question in the August 2022 ABJ and thought of your hypothesis. At least based on the research by Dr. Guzman-Novoa and his team, looks like your hunch is right.


just had a feeling the "boys" would get the "credit" 

so queen excluders on those mean hives while mating queens,, 

so the males with out stingers affect the daughters with stingers, use of the aforementioned stingers.

GG


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Gray Goose said:


> ... so the males with out stingers affect the daughters with stingers...


This sounds downright philosophical...


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## William Bagwell (Sep 4, 2019)

Tried opening the YouTube page in Google translate. Throws an error... Can cut & paste the comments, have to open replies to comments first. 5,000 character limit, but you can paste more then use the scroll arrow at the bottom.

Found this gem, " Secondly: I calm my evil Carpathians by throwing a small piece of propolis into the smoker"


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

GregB said:


> They in the comments stated - smoke was NOT working and if only making them even more angry.
> In case you did not catch that - the bees were attacking the smoker itself.


I spoke with a guy earlier in the week from Soddy Daisy (near Chattanooga). He said he has one yard that is away from civilization, that he doesn’t bother lighting a smoker for that reason.

I’ve had odd instances where it was too late for smoke by the time I got around to it. But this is in the context of 15-20 guard bees with attitude, not 100s or 1000s.

🐝😃


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

if you are in the hives a lot the bees learn.
I once went to a mentees place and lit the smoker,
in 2 min there were several bees around, the first lid was cracked and a robbing frenzy started.

his bees had learned that smoke meant a free lunch.

I checked and he did "full" inspections every week. also asked why so many bees were buzzing around during his inspections.

GG


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Interesting study referenced by Dr. Jay Evans in the January 2023 Bee Culture notes there is asymmetrical selection occurring between haploid and diploid genetic expression, suggesting that drone contributions might be especially important in selection:

_Within and across tissues, haploid- and diploid-biased genes both experienced more purifying selection than expected, and there were consistent asymmetries in selection metrics between haploid- and diploid-biased genes with haploid-biased genes evolving at a significantly faster rate than diploid-biased genes. The asymmetry could result from deleterious alleles having greater fitness effects in diploid-biased genes than they do when in either haploid-biased or constitutively expressed genes._


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

more simply put haploids express recessive genes as there isn't a 2nd set were the donmaint gene can suppress it , and this leads to faster deselection of detrimental mutations

white eyed drones are blind and can't fly to a dca... If you II them to queens with the ressive gene you get white eyed workers...





Honey bee mutations







www.glenn-apiaries.com


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Litsinger said:


> Interesting study referenced by Dr. Jay Evans in the January 2023 Bee Culture notes there is asymmetrical selection occurring between haploid and diploid genetic expression, suggesting that drone contributions might be especially important in selection:
> 
> _Within and across tissues, haploid- and diploid-biased genes both experienced more purifying selection than expected, and there were consistent asymmetries in selection metrics between haploid- and diploid-biased genes with haploid-biased genes evolving at a significantly faster rate than diploid-biased genes. The asymmetry could result from deleterious alleles having greater fitness effects in diploid-biased genes than they do when in either haploid-biased or constitutively expressed genes._





msl said:


> more simply put haploids express recessive genes as there isn't a 2nd set were the donmaint gene can suppress it , and this leads to faster deselection of detrimental mutations
> 
> white eyed drones are blind and can't fly to a dca... If you II them to queens with the ressive gene you get white eyed workers...
> 
> ...


You guys (and several others here) have a considerably deeper understanding of the factors involved in bee genetics than myself. Feel a little caveman-ish around here sometimes. 

@Litsinger - at least one factor being explored seemed to be a wash, .... if I'm reading this right. Right? 


> All else being equal, we expect that haploid expression will lead to an increase in the efficacy of selection (Gerstein et al. 2011; Dapper and Wade 2016; Immler and Otto 2018). However, the increase in the efficacy of selection due to haploidy will be offset by a similar reduction in the efficacy of selection because two-thirds of the copies of the genes are hidden from selection in diploid females (Dapper et al. 2022 and Supplemental). We therefore predict no differences in selection metrics between diploid- and haploid-biased genes and both sets should have evidence of relaxed selection relative to control genes. We tested this prediction using three such selection metrics


@msl - I hadn't come across that info yet. With a chart at least I can grasp some of it. Thanks!


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

joebeewhisperer said:


> ... at least one factor being explored seemed to be a wash, .... if I'm reading this right. Right?


It is what they expected, but not what they found. Interesting stuff.


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## William Bagwell (Sep 4, 2019)

msl said:


> white eyed drones are blind and can't fly to a dca...


That answers a question I had last June when some white eyed drones were found 4.18 mi (6.72 km) from me. Clubs apiary and they traded the queen to Perdue Bee Lab in exchange for a VSH queen from elsewhere. (Not in on all the details...)


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

William Bagwell said:


> That answers a question I had last June when some white eyed drones were found 4.18 mi (6.72 km) from me.


I had some inter-caste bees exit a hive during orientation flights one time- weird stuff:









Bees with Shrunken Heads?


Happy Easter to one and all. While walking by one of my colonies this afternoon I observed what I initially thought might be pesticide exposure, with maybe three dozen bees doubled-over and crawling in the grass. Upon further evaluation however, I noted that approximately half of the...




www.beesource.com


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Litsinger said:


> I had some inter-caste bees exit a hive during orientation flights one time- weird stuff:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I seem to remember that post now that you mention it.


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## little_john (Aug 4, 2014)

In post #1, the OP asks about whether to breed queens or drones from the queen heading a singular outstanding colony and - very much in my personal opinion - I suspect that thinking along those lines may be a mistake, for what is being focussed upon could be considered as being a freak event. That queen, and the colony which has resulted from her are resultant phenotypes, and in order to replicate this chance event it would be far more desirable to identify and breed from the progenitors from which they arose. 

But in a small operation individual genetic lines are unlikely to have been identified and/or maintained for breeding purposes - so it would be much better (again, imo) - to breed from a* trend*, i.e. from more than one colony.

When Brother Adam was asked how an average (non-commercial) beekeeper with a modest handful of hives could improve their stock, he replied that the apiary should be divided into two halves, and queens then raised from the better half (rather than from only the 'best' colony).

My 2p's worth ...

Wishing all a good 2023. 
LJ


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

little_john said:


> In post #1, the OP asks about whether to breed queens or drones from the queen heading a singular outstanding colony and - very much in my personal opinion - I suspect that thinking along those lines may be a mistake, for what is being focussed upon could be considered as being a freak event. That queen, and the colony which has resulted from her are resultant phenotypes, and in order to replicate this chance event it would be far more desirable to identify and breed from the progenitors from which they arose.
> 
> But in a small operation individual genetic lines are unlikely to have been identified and/or maintained for breeding purposes - so it would be much better (again, imo) - to breed from a* trend*, i.e. from more than one colony.
> 
> ...


Thanks for your insights. I did indeed last year breed several drone frames from what I considered far and away my “best” colony. Also I did not raise queens from it/her.

As the season picked up in earnest, virtually all the colonies produced some drones, so without tight controls it’s still a mixed bag. I also brought a nuc from my brother’s 3-4 year TF hive early in the year. This hive originated from a swarm.

It leaves another quandary as well. That is, around 1/2 my current hives now have queens who’s dads are came from this model (not really, but assuming my plan was 100% successful). This colony again looks like it could break out quicker, and I would consider doing the same thing again. But grafting from queens who are sisters to the dads of a new generation wrecks the whole thing.

I really won’t know the “poorer” side of the yard until my late queens get a chance to prove themselves in Apr-May (or I see results then). Brother Adam likely forgot more than I know about bees, and I admit a kindergarten understanding as of now.

I’m keeping my hive counts to 20 or less in fall, and it’s a bit of crap-shoot with those numbers, so breeding from trends makes sense. Our situation is also complicated by our isolation, with the only queens brought in were my brother’s (which later left) and a few queens I bought from the same folks where I got my original stock. So the gene pool is a kiddy pond currently.

I’ll try and breed from the best, and replace/cull anything below standards. I think a queen raised reasonably healthy with more than adequate nutrition and drones will probably lead a colony that produce surplus. I’ll continue to try and hit that mark.

Thanks again 😃🐝 And I welcome additional thoughts.


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