# # Hives Needed For Breeding



## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

I am down to two colonies this yr and one of them was a nuc that swarmed in late June and the queen they raised is going gang busters time will tell if she peters out early I have no clue as to the number of unknown hives in the area though


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

For a successful mating flight you need to have a good drone congregation area. Since you mention
about catching a swarm then there are other beehives near by. So I think 7 hive is enough to give you
some good queens to work with. The only way to find out is to do a practice graft to see.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

jbraun said:


> Is this going to be to small to try?


What exactly are you going to try? Are you planning to make less than 10 queens? If so, the local population will likely provide adequate source of drones. For a small breeding program, where you are focused on specific traits and high quality mating, you would need far more than 7 hives.


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## jbraun (Nov 13, 2013)

For my first year attempt I'd be happy to get 10-12 queens. I've split my original 2 nucs the last few years to get to my 7 this year. But they are pretty mean and I'm wanting a few queens to requeen and expand some. Hopefully the new Carnolians may be easier on me than my mutts. Maybe in a few years I can get the traits I want. Hopefully they will be high quality by then. Next year will tell for me.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

2 will work. 100 is nice... 200 is nicer...


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## stan.vick (Dec 19, 2010)

7 should be enough since you also have feral colonies. If you have yours on foundation they may not have made very many drones, but the feral colonies should take up the slack. As for the traits you want, I dealt with almost all feral colonies and by breeding from the ones that had the traits I wanted I was able to get a good strain of bee without introducing queens from elsewhere, I did destroy some mean queens though. but if you do get other stock I think Carnies are a good choice.


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## Redneck (Oct 2, 2005)

The quality of the drones is more important than the quantity.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Michael Bush is giving you the hint - breed to increase your apiary, capture swarms, buy from different bloodlines, etc. If open mating, I'd consider 50 colonies a minimum for drone flooding in a area with feral drones that are considered undesireable. Even if you don't overcome them to a high degree, you can get some good matings, and still promote a trait or 2, albeit slowly. But, as MB notes, 100 is better, 200 is better still, etc.

As you approach 150 colonies, culling out the bad ones becomes as important as selecting the good bees. Lots of extra work, but the gains do come faster!

Until you get to "big enough", your queen- and drone-rearing methods and skills will have more to do with your quality than genetics.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Michael Bush is giving you the hint 

I guess my point is both... you can raise queens with two hives and they will probably be better queens than you can buy unless you can get on the waiting list with Kirk Webster or Michael Palmer etc...

And yes, you can do even better with more hives... I also agree with the "culling out the bad ones". To maintain more genetic diversity we need to think more on those lines than raising all our queens from a single mother...


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Of course you can raise queens with two colonies. Heck, you can raise a new queen with one colony. Remove the old queen and the bees will raise a new one. My point, about using 100 colonies, is about running an intelligent breeding program. I want enough production colonies for selecting quality breeder queens.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

jbraun said:


> For my first year attempt I'd be happy to get 10-12 queens. I've split my original 2 nucs the last few years to get to my 7 this year. But they are pretty mean and I'm wanting a few queens to requeen and expand some. Hopefully the new Carnolians may be easier on me than my mutts. Maybe in a few years I can get the traits I want. Hopefully they will be high quality by then. Next year will tell for me.


In your situation, with your intentions, I'd buy the best queens I could as soon as possible, requeen all of them and start breeding from better stock. Genetic progress takes a LONG TIME. Might as well start with excellent bees. 

Any that you already have with even a single desirable trait that the new stock lacked could be left in, though. Breed from them, too, and breed from the best of their offspring, culling the worst. Repeat the process. In a decade or two (or 3 or 4), you have excellent bees with that one or two desirable traits that you kept from your original, mean bees. 

That is how progress is made. Breed a lot, choose from the best, cull the worst, repeat. I.I. speeds the process up quite a bit. G.E. speeds it up a whole lot, but there I go opening 2 cans of worms....stick with open mating at first.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Yes, II is better and will speed things up. In this area you have more control on the selection.
But GE I am not so sure. It seems that in this area there is not much of an understanding 
esp. when it comes down to how to control the bees before releasing them into the environment.
If it is good then alright but when it gets out of hands then it is bad really bad for the environment.
How to control and by what standard is not yet fully understand. In the mean time I will continue to
buy the good stocks from reputable breeders and improve by natural selection instead.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Ooooh! Dang! I opened that 2nd can...ha ha ha.

Priorities are usually in the following order: 1) increase the number of colonies in your apiary; 2) get your skill level up such that queen quality is consistently excellent; 3) master open mating; 4) learn trait identification testing; 5) learn I.I. from a competent instructor, not just YouTube; 6) study genetics as is aplies to bees, and apply what you have learned.

Step 5) is , of course, optional. The bees don't have to be taught how to mate. It just gives the breeder control over who mates with whom, and generally makes progress toward a genetic goal every mating, which elliminates waiting for random to get it right.

By the way, if you figure that a typical colony has perhaps 200 drones in the peak of the season, that's enough to mate between 4 and 10 queens properly. If that guy in the thread you mentioned (the guy with 20 colonies) is trying to mate more queens that there are 20 drones per queen for, he'll likely *NOT* get a lot of well-mated queens. He should not be mating more than 200 queens at a time (preferably more like 50 at one time), and keep the cycle back to a week or 8 days, so the drone population can catch up. They'd be far better off with 100 to 200 drones per queen in the air, especially if he is already culling the bad drones out. 

I usually figure that a queen who mated with mostly or all feral drones will be very unlikely to have desirable traits, so flooding is indeed important. If you figure 1 drone colony per queen, you probably won't be short of drones.


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## jbraun (Nov 13, 2013)

Kilocharli, Lots more to consider in that 2nd can.... This year my goals are 1 and 5. 2,3,4 and 6 are probably multiple year goals. When people talk about drone colonies do they mean any colonies? Or specific colonies bred for that specific quality? ie me using NWC.

This summer my bee club has a good breeder in SE Missouri who teaches queen rearing. I'm ready to take his class this year. But I may try on my own in mid-spring first. Then take the class to see what mistakes I made.

I was going to take my queens to another place about 3 miles from my apiary but I may leave them in the far end of the hay field about 1/2 mile from the other colonies. I have 3 hives that I requeened with NWC this summer. That may give me a start. With what you said about the ratios I see why more is better.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

If you take careful notes of your bees, and do considerable testing, you can learn which traits are passed by the female, which are passed by the male, and which are passed by either. There are plot complications - recessive traits, but for now, just try to grasp that you want drone colonies to have a trait that you'd like to pass along. Colonies that have traits that you are trying to get rid of get re-queened with better stock.

You drone colonies should have desirable male-passed traits, and as few undesirable male -passed traits as possible.

So, if you are just producing queens, don't worry about who mates with whom, but if you are a breeder - and that's someone trying to achieve a genetic goal, not just make queens - you are breeding drone mothers in much larger quantities than you are breeding queen mothers, and keeping very careful records of the significant traits.

At this point, you'd do well just to increase the apiary (do consider purchasing some excellent queeen and drone stock), raise lots of queens, and make increaser colonies. Spend the rest of 2015 and 2016 testing and observing your colonies, taking notes, and honing your beekeepoing and queen rearing skills. When you get up around 100 to 150 colonies, you'll have enough to begin selecting some % of the best for queens, and at least 4 (maybe 20 or more times that number) for drones. 

As you begin to know your genetic goals and how to get there, you'll start de-selecting the drones with undesireable traits and /or low overall scores (I use the capping fork to remove drone brood while checking for mites) and re-queen the most undesirable colonies.

Most 1-man operations are limited to 700 to 1,000 colonies due to time constraints, and that's working long, hard days and lot of nights. 

Breeders usually keep fewer than that - more like less than 500 - because of all the trait identification, quantification, and overall scorekeeping involved. If you are getting up to I.I. level, you'll really need at least 2 people, probably more. You then have queen rearing calendar, drone rearing calendar, multiple bloodlines in the same groups, out-crossing histories, semen collection, insemination, nucleus colony building and management, sales and shipping, and lots more record keeping added to the heap. Still interested? i'm looking for some business partners who think that's pretty groovy stuff. You'd do well to check out Glenn Apiaries' website, www.glenn-apiaries.com Tom and Suki are now retired, but they maintain the website.

If it sounds like a PITA, just open mate and choose from the best. You may get lucky, and you'll probably have enough queens.


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

May I suggest starting at a manageable point? Learn how to raise good quality queens, select the best you have to graft from and produce open mated daughters. It is very challenging to implement a selection program with a relatively small number of colonies and little control over matings. I do not say this to be critical or discouraging, just to offer peace of mind. Once you become proficient at raising good queens, you can always advance to the next step/level. For now, I think your greatest advancement would be from learning how to raise quality queens.


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## jbraun (Nov 13, 2013)

Thanks to all of the helpful info. Lots to consider and lots more education ahead. It's dawning on me how important good record keeping is. I've instigated that and will continue in the future. What's the saying? Something about being doomed to repeat the past. This has been a great journey and I'm enjoying the trip.


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