# Aren't You Breeding for Your Management Style?



## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

I'm reading Steve Taber's "Breeding Super Bees".

On pages 20-21, Taber is discussing a study on different breeding stock that was done in an attempt to find the best stocks available. They noted that one breeder was consistently producing queens that headed colonies which were extreme producers. 
*
"...The conclusion was the stock was no better than available anywhere else. That's right! When we reared queens from that stock or from the poorly performing groups, we turned out very high-performance queens. So it wasn't the stock that was good -- it was the queen breeder... to raise superior queens was mostly a matter of creating a superior environment..."*

As a queen breeder, aren't you breeding for your own management approach? Aren't you raising stock that increasingly suited to thrive when provided your particular pattern of management?


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Adam Foster Collins said:


> On pages 20-21, Taber is discussing a study on different *breeding stock* that was done in an attempt to find the best stocks available. They noted that *one breeder* was consistently producing queens that headed colonies which were extreme producers.


Is the "one breeder" referring to a particular person/company or to a particular queen, i.e., a particular breeder queen? Its not 100% clear out of the context of the book.


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## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

The "one breeder" in this case is a person/company. A queen producer. They are not named.


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

Taber was speaking of improving the environment in the Starter and Finishing colonies to make queens that were as good as could be produced. He was not talking about the production colonies that they were placed into. The only thing that takes place in a production colony that would influence the queen-mother, other than the amount of worker comb, would be the selection criteria for picking queen mothers.

The queen producer Taber spoke of was Jay Smith.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Adam Foster Collins said:


> I*So it wasn't the stock that was good -- it was the queen breeder... to raise superior queens was mostly a matter of creating a superior environment..."*



Well, such a statement seems to discount genetics entirely. Not sure I agree with such an assessment. However, I do agree that someone highly skilled in rearing and mating queens will make up for some deficiencies. The importance of quality cell building and managing mating zones is critical and pays huge dividends in the final product. That said, I'm a strong believer that genetics matter. The real exceptional queens come from those who are BOTH highly skilled in rearing AND have great genetics in their stock. To me statements like this are made to bring in some balance by pointing out that its not all about genetics and that proper techniques and environments make a huge difference.


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

It was found that several of the queen breeders that produced queens for the study were actually using queen-mothers they had purchased from Jay Smith. Even using the same stock, Smith always produced the queens that scored highest in the trials. This is why the study determined that the methods and care in producing the trial queens furnished by Smith was the reason his queens always out produced the others.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

AR Beekeeper said:


> It was found that several of the queen breeders that produced queens for the study were actually using queen-mothers they had purchased from Jay Smith. Even using the same stock, Smith always produced the queens that scored highest in the trials. This is why the study determined that the methods and care in producing the trial queens furnished by Smith was the reason his queens always out produced the others.


No wonder hearing all those complaints from US that queen bees don´t even live half a year. A sure sign of poor quality.
No wonder Brother Adam explained how many things there is to think about to make a qood queen:
- quality of the eggs
- quality of the larvae, right age and plenty of food 
- cell starter full of well fed young nursing bees (so full, that the frame with grafted larvae slowly landed into the bees, when beekeeper drops it from his fingers), 
- a queen must hatch among a large amount of bees (not into a cage or too small mating hive) 
- drone hives must be equally taken care of, drone hives must be well fed, especially pollen 
- a queen must be put into her new hive with care and in the right age (a queen that just started to lay is way too young, maturation process takes several weeks, Adam put his new queens in the next spring into nucs, the queen was at that time about 9 months old )


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Juhani Lunden said:


> No wonder Brother Adam explained how many things there is to think about to make a qood queen:
> - quality of the eggs


And how does one evaluate the quality of eggs? Actually have never given this much thought. I do try to keep my queen mother colonies well fed and populous. What else can be done? 



Juhani Lunden said:


> - a queen must hatch among a large amount of bees (not into a cage or too small mating hive)


I've posted objections to hatching virgins in incubators before simply because of this point. Newly emerged virgins are very hungry and they need access to honey and nurse bees. Incubators rarely provide these needs. For me, I can't babysit an incubator to make sure the newly emerged virgins are provided these resources, which is the reason I try get my cells out of the incubator and into nucs. Sue Cobey mentioned that virgins need to be free roaming in a nuc pre- and post-insemination to achieve the best quality.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Juhani Lunden said:


> No wonder hearing all those complaints from US that queen bees don´t even live half a year. A sure sign of poor quality.
> No wonder Brother Adam explained how many things there is to think about to make a qood queen:
> - quality of the eggs
> - quality of the larvae, right age and plenty of food
> ...


Nice post Juhani. Yes, lots of wisdom in Brother Adam's observations and they all pass the logic test with me (though I am also a bit puzzled about how one determines egg quality). I love the part about the "slow landing" of grafted larvae, my rule is if that opening isn't full of bees you better be adding some. 
I used to raise 500-1,000 queens annually in baby nucs of little more than 2 shallow frames. I quit for a number of reasons but primarily because it seemed that I got queens of consistently better quality, by using more resources (a split 10 frame deep with 2 full frames of brood) and transferring that nuc into a full sized hive body and never allowing the queen to stop laying. Though I am always curious to see them, about the only queens I get to see visually in our operation are those I catch sight of during check backs.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Queens raised from average stocks under ideal conditions will be better queens than those raised from the best stocks under less than ideal conditions.

I follow Bro Adam's cell building methods, and when he says: "cell starter full of well fed young nursing bees (so full, that the frame with grafted larvae slowly landed into the bees, when beekeeper drops it from his fingers)"...He means something like this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHIkLGGlEAQ


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Nice Mike. Did I understand you to say that you were going to be putting graft in later in the day? Are you inserting empty cups for cleaning in the video? If so, do you find better acceptance when you do this?


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

AstroBee said:


> And how does one evaluate the quality of eggs? Actually have never given this much thought..


Important breeder queens are confined to small nucs, so that they cannot lay much. Egg are larger, plus the queen holds on longer.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Michael Palmer said:


> Queens raised from average stocks under ideal conditions will be better queens than those raised from the best stocks under less than ideal conditions.
> 
> I follow Bro Adam's cell building methods, and when he says: "cell starter full of well fed young nursing bees (so full, that the frame with grafted larvae slowly landed into the bees, when beekeeper drops it from his fingers)"...He means something like this...
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHIkLGGlEAQ


Yes he did, video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RriNoKaroHw

look at 23 minutes 30 sec


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Aren't You Breeding for Your Management Style?

I don't think that was Taber's point...

>Queens raised from average stocks under ideal conditions will be better queens than those raised from the best stocks under less than ideal conditions.

I think THAT was Taber's point. One I agree with totally. That does not mean that genetics isn't important, but it's not as important as the conditions.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Michael Palmer said:


> Queens raised from average stocks under ideal conditions will be better queens than those raised from the best stocks under less than ideal conditions.


When I heard you say that in the National Honey Show video, it suddenly made a LOT of things go 'click' for me, and the video of all those bees in the cell builder made a lot of sense. The other comment that really rang true, 'Its all about the jelly'.

But eventually I realized something else. You put in 3 bars, and with many years of experience, have a reasonable expectation of close to 100% take. For those of us working at a much smaller scale, and without the years of practice grafting, a single bar of cups that yields 50% take, doesn't need quite so many bees in the builder, to get 6 or 8 cells equally well fed. But I am going to borrow the rest of your concepts, get a pollen trap out early so we have some fresh pollen to use spiking the builder, and make sure they have everything else laid out, just on smaller scale. If i can get 8 cells accepted, and see the cups overflowing with jelly, I'll be a really happy camper. If it takes on the order of 24000 house bees to feed your 48 cells properly, then it'll only take on the order of 4000 dedicated house bees to feed my 8 cells to the same level.

Unless I've missed some really big detail along the way, suddenly the 'strong starter' doesn't look so intimidating or difficult to set up anymore. An average colony, with a couple extra capped brood frames added a week in advance, should be able to do the job nicely with only one bar, and a novice grafter that'll surely get it wrong on half of them.


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## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

Michael Bush said:


> >Aren't You Breeding for Your Management Style?
> 
> I don't think that was Taber's point...


I realize that Taber's point was not the same as the question I'm posing. And I guess including his words is just confusing. His point just made me think about mine - the title of the thread.

I can see that it is true that a person's management approach is key to raising strong stock. But what I'm asking about goes beyond that. *I'm asking about whether or not you think that a person's management style affects the outcome of the breeding program in terms of a bias toward a specific management profile*.

For instance:

Let's say that I feed my bees religiously with a particular pollen sub each spring to assist build-up. Let's also say that follow a strict regimen of treating for mites in both spring and fall - these are just examples.

But do those patterns of manipulation affect the outcome of my breeding program?

Will the queens I produce show a tendency to perform best on similar patterns of management?

Let's say that I breed queens on a very specific management structure over many years. If daughters of my queens are managed by others quite differently - let's say rarely getting pollen sub in the spring; treated once in the fall - Is it more likely that those daughter queens are likely to perform quite differently under different patterns of care?

*Are you breeding bees that are inclined to perform best within your own management practices?*

Adam


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

jim lyon said:


> Nice Mike. Did I understand you to say that you were going to be putting graft in later in the day? Are you inserting empty cups for cleaning in the video? If so, do you find better acceptance when you do this?


I give the graft 2 or 3 hours after adding the nurse bees and making the cell builder queenless. No, not giving them the cups to polish and warm. I get an average of 45+ from 48 grafts, with no prime, cleaning/polishing, etc. Graft right into cups and give it to the bees.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Michael Bush said:


> I think THAT was Taber's point. One I agree with totally. That does not mean that genetics isn't important, but it's not as important as the conditions.


I think it means that raising quality queens isn't just about nature, and isn't just about nurture. It's about nature AND nurture.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

grozzie2 said:


> For those of us working at a much smaller scale, and without the years of practice grafting, a single bar of cups that yields 50% take, doesn't need quite so many bees in the builder, to get 6 or 8 cells equally well fed.


I'm with you on scaling things to an appropriate level based upon needs. Very few hobbyist need 45 cells per round. That said, I'm not sure I agree with your premise of a 50% take being acceptable. Please excuse this if I misinterpret your comment. For me, if I give 15 cups, I fully expect to get very close to 15 awesome cells. If I only got 7 out of those 15, that would tell me that I've done something wrong and its very likely that those remaining 7 would not be truly great cells. The question would then be what element in my process resulted in the low yield? Could be that the graft was wrong, could be the state of the cell builder, lots of things can go wrong, but I think you need to dig into why your yields are not closer to 100%. Not being critical of your post, just suggesting that you should continue to fine tune your methods.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Adam Foster Collins said:


> *Are you breeding bees that are inclined to perform best within your own management practices?*
> 
> Adam


I would say yes


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## thehackleguy (Jul 29, 2014)

So what is the process for getting that cell builder hive with so many bees? 

-Put in frames that are close to emerging with nurse bees
-Shake in more nurse bees
-place grafts 2-3 hrs later

*Am I getting that correct?*


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Not only are most beekeepers who are doing selective breeding, breeding for their management style but also breeding for their product. Certainly you can breed bees that are "smart" enough to build nice parallel combs rather than a mess of cross combs. You can breed bees that make nice comb honey. You can breed bees that waste all their energy making bees and if you sell bees, this is a good thing for you.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

AstroBee said:


> Very few hobbyist need 45 cells per round. That said, I'm not sure I agree with your premise of a 50% take being acceptable. Please excuse this if I misinterpret your comment.


I was happy with 50% this last summer. First time with a grafting tool in my hands, so, I probably did flip a few of the larvae without realizing it. Gotta start somewhere. I'm sure after I've done it a few more times, I'll be pretty unhappy with 50%, but for somebody just starting down the path, it's actually quite exciting to pull the cell bar frame up on the second day, and see cells being drawn down from half the cups.


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## thehackleguy (Jul 29, 2014)

grozzie2 said:


> but for somebody just starting down the path, it's actually quite exciting to pull the cell bar frame up on the second day, and see cells being drawn down from half the cups.


:thumbsup: That will be me this summer!


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