# "Order of Operations" for genetic selection?



## bluegrass (Aug 30, 2006)

For my own proposes I would assign a value % to each trait, then average the numbers and the highest average is the your mother colony.

In reality you probably will not be able to reliably selectively breed for traits without having both mother and drone colonies and without AI breeding all your virgin queens. 

For me my highest score would go towards survivability. My neighbor has a colony that I started 6 years ago, it is still alive and has only been requeened by swarm activity with daughter queens. 

I think aggressiveness and the traits for quick spring build up and high honey yields go hand in hand. It is hard to find a calm colony that also produces exceptionally well and builds up well.


----------



## beeware10 (Jul 25, 2010)

It is nearly impossible to evaluate a queen in one year. breeding from your best hives gives a summary of the best hives.


----------



## Specialkayme (Sep 4, 2005)

beeware10 said:


> It is nearly impossible to evaluate a queen in one year.


True, but who said we were doing that?



bluegrass said:


> For my own proposes I would assign a value % to each trait, then average the numbers and the highest average is the your mother colony.


So in otherwords, you are placing a subjective view on your "best" colony, and breeding from there. Have you found it easier/harder to select for certain traits than others?



bluegrass said:


> I think aggressiveness and the traits for quick spring build up and high honey yields go hand in hand. It is hard to find a calm colony that also produces exceptionally well and builds up well.


Generally, I think I would agree. However I have found the exception to the rule, from time to time (before I started grafting and queen rearing). Isn't the exception to the rule what we are looking for though?


----------



## frazzledfozzle (May 26, 2010)

I think alot would depend on what you are using your bees for.
If I was hobbyist and had 3 hives I would use the gentle bees with slow buildup and below average honey production because I dont need to make money from my bees.
If I was a commercial that was mainly a pollinator I would also go for the gentle bees If I was purely into honey as a commercial then I would go graft from the agressive queen that was producing lots of honey but I would counter that by flooding my area with drones from the gentle hives to try to, (over time} reduce the amount of agressiveness.


----------



## bluegrass (Aug 30, 2006)

Specialkayme said:


> So in otherwords, you are placing a subjective view on your "best" colony, and breeding from there. Have you found it easier/harder to select for certain traits than others?


I don't select for certain traits in the context that I think you are trying to. I place a very high value on the colony's ability to survive without supplement feeding or excessive nurturing. A colony that can't survive is useless to me regardless of how calm, how fast it builds up, or how much honey it produces.

So for me a colony that produces well, and winters well but is so hot you can't walk within 10 yards of it is a better colony then one that is calm, produces well, but has to be treated frequently and fed all winter long. 

Rather than trying to selectively breed for all good traits I accept the bad in order to get the goods. I think mike bush would call it "lazy beekeeping". Rather then expend time, resources and energy trying to get the best on every front, I propagate the bad with the good and place a high value on survivability. After all, a dead hive doesn't produce much honey.


----------



## heaflaw (Feb 26, 2007)

If someone who has a lot of experience with breeding would discuss which traits are easiest to select for and fix, it would go a long way toward pointing you in the right direction.


----------



## bluegrass (Aug 30, 2006)

If you can find the US DEPT AG's handbook #335 it is a little dated (1980) but has a lot of good information on selectively breeding honey bees.


----------



## BeeCurious (Aug 7, 2007)

Try to find a copy of "Elemental Genetics and Breeding for the Honeybee" by Ernesto Guzman. It may be useful.


----------



## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Justin, Here's the trick.. when selecting for grafting stock, you want to select for qualities that the Queen will possess... drones can carry the other traits... ie... spring build up is a quality that only the queen needs to possess, as the colony itself does not contribute to this factor... so select your earliest build up hives to graft from so that you will be closer to reproducing these traits in the next queens... vsh is a recessive trait, meaning both queen and x number of drones have to possess it in order for the new colony to express it... so you need to select to graft from your vsh colonies that build up the earliest...

honey production can be left to the drones, but honey production is more mechanics than genetics... ie, the early build up colonies that are not so much effected by pests and diseases "can" produce more honey than a late bloomer that dwindles due to mites... but at the same time, vsh can lower production due to its own mechanics... so the best way to keep a good handle on this is to use the good ol 50/50 rule... half of the drone colonies in your mating yard being vsh, and the other half not... all of the queens that you graft must have it, thus you run the best chances of getting 50%+ of vsh drones mated with each queen, but not ALL of the drones that mate with them will possess it... thus the resulting colonies will be 50%+ vsh and the rest of the workers will be the quickly maturing non-vsh framers... does that make sense? Lol.


----------



## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Basically, try to think of what creates each "Quality"... that will get you in the right perpective...:scratch: Hope this helps!


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

The only pitfall I can see in picking the ones that are "doing well" (healthy, making honey, gentle etc.) is that bees that make a real bumper crop are sometimes the "gamblers" who raised a lot of brood too early but got lucky and the flow hit just the right time and they made a bumper crop. The same genetics in a different year may have starved doing the same thing. Other than that, it's easy to pick bees that are thriving and not having health issues and are easy to work with. The other thing is, if you view it more from weeding out what you don't want, while maintaining as much diversity as you can, then you breed from ALL the hives that are doing well, not just one, and requeen the ones that aren't doing well with that stock.


----------



## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

MB is right, but that may be getting a bit more complex than you need to go for in your first season. 

If you are trying to raise the best bees for your area, watch for the "best" build up, this is not always the "first" build up, it depends wholy on your climate and forage. Grafting from the queens that build up early and boom at just the right time for YOUR area will almost always land you with daughters that will do the same... that said, this same quality will lead to heavier honey production... as will "foraging distance", but that trait will depend more on the breeds or strains that you use...

"Shut-Down" (which leads to better winter hardiness) will also be a quality that you will look for in grafting stock, but you may want to work on identifying that one in your daughters so that you may address it during the second season...

"Lowered Swarming" (which also leads to heavier honey production) needs to be identified in your daughters and addressed during the next season... Tip: you can intentionally let daughters get honey logged, then watch closely and requeen the first 50% to swarm with queens that you graft from the other 50%... to do so, just open up the brood chambers on the later 50% as soon as the last of the first 50% has swarmed, any that swarm anyway should be added to the "requeen" list...

Gentleness is important to look for in the grafting stock, but even more important in your drone stock, as it seems that aggression traits are passed more so by the drones than the queens... 

A quick "run-down"... 

1. Remove any agressive stock COMPLETELY... (its too late now to just requeen, the drones are already out in your area)

2. Select the best "overall" colonies to graft from... these are the colonies that express the best maternal traits... ie.. Build up, shut-down (if you know), Queen size/color, lowered swarming (next season), etc.. also remember that vsh HAS to be from both grafting stock AND at least 50% of the drone colonies to be passed along to the daugher colonies...

3. Cull as much drone brood as possible from the grafting stock colonies from the very start all the way until the end of the mating season... Drone comb is a great help here, as you can pull it and exchange it with more drone comb (it must be drone comb that you put back in or they will start making more on their own) after capping each time...

4. Select the best "Overall" colonies for drone production... these are the colonies that express the paternal traits (keep in mind that even if the colony is not a great honey producer, but is very gentle and carrys the vsh trait, you may want to add it to the drone colonies because the grafting stock will address honey production through build up and lowered swarming, so this colony will still be benefitial in boosting the gentleness effects of the grafting stock while not robbing the daugher colonies of honey productivity...) Gentleness and VSH are the most important aspects to look for... the other aspects will somewhat fall into place... ie.. to have a good drone colony in the first place, it must have built up well in order to produce enough drones (so long as you are placing drone combs in the 3rd frame position, and this is hightened by using drone comb foundation in that position...)...

I think that everyone here knows that I prefer later season queens over early spring queens... being a breeder, you HAVE to try to produce the top quality queens FAR earlier than nature would have it... in just trying to produce the earliest queens that you can, you will find yourself selecting for earlier build up... you have to have cell builders, bulk bees to fill nucs, ect.. and a lot of times the finishers are the grafting stock colonies because they are built up the earliest... the bulk bees may come from drone colonies, again because they have them to spare before most others, and their purpose does not require them to stay packed with workers... Over the years this process can lead you to developing earlier and earlier build up queens... So if you provide queens to the northern climates, you will need to "outsource" some of your daughters to operations in those climates... give strick instructions on how to select from the colonies that are headed by your queens, and have the top queens shipped over night back to you for grafting from... that way you are grafting from stock that is acclimatized to the northern climates, but utilizing your extra early build up to provide the bees that will raise the cells... Make sense? :scratch: But keep that in mind for later years... This year, just focus on Good buildup(Queen), Resistances (Queen and drones), Gentleness (queen and drones)... Then study your daughters for selection for the next season...


----------



## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

bluegrass said:


> I think aggressiveness and the traits for quick spring build up and high honey yields go hand in hand. It is hard to find a calm colony that also produces exceptionally well and builds up well.


The first thing about "Gentleness" to remember is that you cant really select FOR it, but rather you can select away FROM "aggression".

This has been the subject of great debate... I think that far too often people confuse a lesser colony as being more gentle than a stronger colony... ie.. hive 1 has a slow laying queen and keeps an average of 20,000 bees in it... at any given time you can work this hive with only 4-8 guards bumping you here and there... hive 2 has a good layer and keeps an average of 52,000 bees at any given time... even if they are identical in temperment, hive 2 would seem hotter than hive 1 simply because it has more than twice as many guards bumping you from time to time... 

Now through in the exception to the rule... hive 3... a prolific laying Sunkist with an average of 80,000 bees... the 4-8 guards bumping you from time to time has now become a small black cloud of calvary... not because they are any less gentle, but its just the number of bees in hive 3 means more guards at any given time...

That said, it is hard to truly judge the aggressiveness of a colony unless you actually watch them over time... if you open the chamber today, you may see full rows of guards peeking at you from between the frames, but three weeks from now, it may be Far less... there are exceptions... I have seen bees that you literally had to hold and press their tails against you to get stung... Sound great??? Not so much, with this "Gentleness" (aka reluctance to sting) came and extreme "runny" nervousness on the comb... pull out a frame and every bee would rush to the other side... turn it over and they would rush back... and dont even TRY to get a hold of the queens... inch:

So how do you select for "gentleness" if its so hard to judge??? By absolutely NOT tolerating any Mean Mommas... If you are working a hive that only has 6-8 frames of bees and brood, and you are getting bumped and stung by more than 10 or so bees... Remove and Requeen. Keep in mind that there are several other aspects that can make a hive "grumpy", so you will need to delve into the possibilities there first... 

But basically you will know when a hive is just "Mean"... Dont put up with it... Especially if you are breeding queens...


----------



## Specialkayme (Sep 4, 2005)

Wow, there is a wealth of knowledge just in the last few posts alone  A great help from both Russell and Mr. Bush, thank both of you. 

I think it will probably take me a few days to actually digest all of this material, but it's good. I think I do have a few comments, and questions for now.



rrussell6870 said:


> .. when selecting for grafting stock, you want to select for qualities that the Queen will possess... drones can carry the other traits...


This makes ALOT of sense.

Perhaps I was trying to view it on too small of a scale. I think it may be better for me to divide things into "graft" sections, "drone" sections, and "overall" sections (meaning both).

Your "graft" sections would be characteristics and traits that you wish to pass along to your queen.

Your "drone" sections would be characteristics and traits that you wish for the workers to have, and pass along through drones.

Your "overall" sections would be characteristics and traits that BOTH the queen and the workers (and through it the drones) need to possess.

From there, year one's "graft" hives can become year two's "drone" hives, right?

So now we need to identify which categories each trait falls under.

Recessive traits need to be in the "overall" category, which would include hygienic behavior (as well as vsh). Gentleness should also be in this category, along with survivability.

Spring buildup should be in the "graft" hive.

And Honey production (along with pollen foraging) should be in the "drone" hive.

Does that sound good so far?



Michael Bush said:


> if you view it more from weeding out what you don't want, while maintaining as much diversity as you can, then you breed from ALL the hives that are doing well, not just one, and requeen the ones that aren't doing well with that stock.


Once you have a stock that you like, that makes perfect sense.

But I'm not sure if it's so wise when you are starting out with 10 hives. Say you have 1 hive that is doing fantastic. That hive you graft queens from. But your drones would come from the other 9 hives (or most of them from the one you packed with drone comb). So at best you would have a queen that has great genetics, but only half of them get passed on to the workers along with the other half coming from less than stellar drones. It's an uphill battle, with little genetic diversity to do it that way, or am I not taking something into consideration?



rrussell6870 said:


> "Shut-Down" (which leads to better winter hardiness) will also be a quality that you will look for in grafting stock


Duly noted. "Shut-Down" goes in the "graft" section. 

Do you have an objective way to measure "Shut-Down"?



rrussell6870 said:


> "Lowered Swarming" (which also leads to heavier honey production) needs to be identified in your daughters and addressed during the next season...


Which should be a "drone" characteristic, right?



rrussell6870 said:


> it seems that aggression traits are passed more so by the drones than the queens...


Thank you. This is the type of thing I was wondering. 



rrussell6870 said:


> 1. Remove any agressive stock COMPLETELY... (its too late now to just requeen, the drones are already out in your area)


Just to make sure that we are clear, I have no expectations going into this season (or out of it). I only hope that I don't loose all my hives  I don't expect to have stellar queens anytime in the next 6 or so years. But after that, I hope to be at a good place, we'll see though.

So for now, I have 5 queen cells from a good calm hive, and 7 from an aggressive (yet productive) hive. If I should be trying to remove the aggressiveness completely, I should go ahead and crush the 7 aggressive cells, right?

And yes, the drones from that hive are already out. I was hoping to be able to keep them out to pass on the vsh and other qualities, while breading out the aggressiveness, but I think that was just wishful thinking. Should I be attempting to remove the drones? Or should I just take it as it is, flood the area with other drones next time, and consider it all a learning experience?



rrussell6870 said:


> Select the best "overall" colonies to graft from...


My best "overall" colony isn't that great, but mainly due to the statistics behind it. I only have 10 hives, and I've kinda been letting them do their own thing the past few years. You get what you get. But from here on out, I'm only looking for improvement, so hopefully my "best" will become "better" with every season.



rrussell6870 said:


> Cull as much drone brood as possible from the grafting stock colonies from the very start all the way until the end of the mating season...


So I should be doing this now? By culling, you mean freezing, correct?



rrussell6870 said:


> Gentleness and VSH are the most important aspects to look for... the other aspects will somewhat fall into place...


Once again, a wealth of knowledge. Thanks so much. 



rrussell6870 said:


> I think that everyone here knows that I prefer later season queens over early spring queens...


The MDA Splitter author wrote on that topic, but I wasn't sure how accurate it was. I will likely be producing queens well into the end of the season, mainly because I'm expecting to screw so much of it up in the beginning.

Well, that and I'd like to try out your Sunkist, and both graft from one and use the other as a drone colony. Too bad the weather isn't cooperating with my plans, lol.



rrussell6870 said:


> This year, just focus on Good buildup(Queen), Resistances (Queen and drones), Gentleness (queen and drones)... Then study your daughters for selection for the next season...


I was actually trying to focus on technique and mechanics this year. If I get decent queens, that's great, but I'd like to know what I'm doing this year, and not make mistakes next year. 

While on the way, of course, I will look for the above mentioned traits.



rrussell6870 said:


> it is hard to truly judge the aggressiveness of a colony unless you actually watch them over time...


at the current point in time, I'm just measuring aggressiveness in relation to each other hive in the yard. One hive is a deep and two mediums, and they don't seem very interested in me. Another is a deep, two mediums, and a super and I can't see through the bees bumping my veil to get a good look at the inside of the hive. 

But I get what you are saying.



rrussell6870 said:


> with this "Gentleness" (aka reluctance to sting) came and extreme "runny" nervousness on the comb...


Any tricks to getting extreme gentleness as well as no nervousness? Or am I chasing a unicorn?



rrussell6870 said:


> So how do you select for "gentleness" if its so hard to judge??? By absolutely NOT tolerating any Mean Mommas...


Up until this point in time, that was difficult to do. When queens were $25-40, requeening half your hives became an expensive ordeal, especially for the hobbiest. But I guess now I'm reaping what I sowed. I'm fine with assertive re-queening now, especially since I will be making my own queens. I just have to find a good balance between assertive re-queening and not depleting the gene pool.


----------



## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Close... I am going to have to post a few times to make notations because I am using my cell and can't multi quote from it.

First, do not smash the seven cells from the more aggressive but heavier producing hives... instead, start these new queens into nucs and judge their aggression levels from there... remember that the aggression traits are more so linked to the drones than the queens, thus the larvae that you grafted from these hives may not have all been fertilized by drones that carried the aggressive traits... also keep in mind that a stronger hive will simply seem more aggressive than a weaker one due to the higher number of bees in the colony... thus a higher number of guards at any given time... a you don't want a colony that is "too gentle"... bees have stingers, that's just the way they are, we don't want to change that, we just want to be able to work in them without causing to much stress on the hive or the beekeeper alike... they need to be able to defend their nests, but you don't want them to take a week to calm down after working with them either...


----------



## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Next, honey production is based on a compilation of nearly all other traits, and even more so on the compilation of mechanics and manipulations..."build up" is the first trait that you need to secure as it allows for the mechanics of a heavy population that needs food at the time of the flow... the next trait is "lowered swarming", which is passed more so by the queen, so it needs to be in your grafting stock... this trait also effects the colony in a mechanical manner... 

Simply put, it means that the queen will tolerate more overhead stores and more congestion within the colony before she decides to move out... there has been some debate about this trait as it has been theorized that the more that you select for this trait, the more "messy" the queen will allow the hive to be, and thus the less hygienic the bees will become... I have seen the opposite result in the Sunkist line as the bees seem to become even more hygienic as the hives get over populated as if they are trying to keep the queen happy to boost their own chances to out perform the other colonies for winter survival. This trait will help the colonies to produce more surplus by simply allowing the colony to maintain heavy populations longer throughout the season, and in some cases for the entire season. But manipulations may also be used to help this trait along.

The next trait that you will need to secure is foraging distance or pollen hoarding... you will find that two traits coexist, so by identifying one will lead you to selecting for both. It's far more simple to locate bee bread in a colony and find the colonies that seem to store it more heavily than others than it is to tell how far the bees are actually traveling, so starting there will lead you in the right direction. Bees need pollen to raise brood and feed the queen so she can produce more brood and inturn have a heavier population to forage during the flow as well as a further distance to travel, creating a larger amount of forage available to them...

The last trait to think about is "shut-down"... this trait simply means that the queen will slow her laying accordingly as the flow and temperatures change... the reason that this effects honey production is because the resources that are used up by the bees to rear brood would be somewhat smaller if the population were to expand and contract in size according to the forage resources that are available... this is a tricky trait to track, and I do not recommend that you get too engrossed in trying to select for it... the colonies that perform best is your area are the ones that have the best timing... that is good enough for now, as you gain experience with selecting for these things, you will be. able to follow the rabbit a bit deeper down that hole. lol.

So when selecting for honey production, you want to add each of the traits to your "overall' list... grafting stock will provide the necessary queen carried traits, such as build up, shut-down, lowered swarming... and both grafting stock and drone stock will be needed to provide the pollen hoarding/foraging distance traits.


----------



## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

You don't have to freeze the drone comb to cull the drones, unless you have mite issues that you are addressing at the same time... simply smash it, cut it, or otherwise make a mess of it with your hive tool if its on standard frames... if its mainly in-between chambers along the bottoms and tops of frames, just cut it out and throw it... if you are using drawn drone cell foundation, just set it on an ant bed and place an empty one in its place and keep exchanging them every few weeks... if you do not have drawn drone cell frames, use wax drone cell foundation and keep an eye on the other frames as they may use them for drones once they realize that they do not have enough.


----------



## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Specialkayme said:


> I was actually trying to focus on technique and mechanics this year. If I get decent queens, that's great, but I'd like to know what I'm doing this year, and not make mistakes next year.
> 
> While on the way, of course, I will look for the above mentioned traits.
> 
> ...


Well that was my attempt at a multi quote from a cell phone... and it only took twenty minutes to erase all of the other stuff! Lol. 

The first two lines are poetry... you are doing the right thing... get the processes down and then next season, you can grow into it a bit more, and so on, and so on... studying queen traits can be a bit difficult for the untrained eye, so you may want to set up a few nucs and study the actions of resulting queens in those... but keep in mind that the nucs are just for studying, the only way that you can truly gauge them accurately is to give them a full hive with "free run of the place" and catalog their successes, weak points and actions under all different times of the year.

On the extreme gentleness search... unicorns may be an understatement.. its more like a "one eyed, one horned, flying purple people eater" that wants to get a job in a rock and roll band...(HUGE hit with my kids.. lol) "gentleness" in bees does not actually exist, what we call "gentle" is actually just "reluctance to sting", "fear", and "lowered defense of the nest"... and again, most people confuse weaker hives as being "gentle" hives... so if you breed TOO much for gentleness, you lose other good qualities... the best way to "select for gentleness" is to simply "select AWAY from aggression", by removing hives that are truly mean... in your case they may not be as bad as you think, but further down the road when you have 100+ hives, the best way to keep selecting away from aggression in an operation that really does not have any "mean" hives, is to simply pic the most productive, set them aside, then pic the meanest 10% of the rest and requeen them with cells from the calmest hives... this addresses as much as 20% of an operation per year, moving the operation further towards less aggressive stock each season while maintaining productivity.


----------



## Specialkayme (Sep 4, 2005)

rrussell6870 said:


> instead, start these new queens into nucs and judge their aggression levels from there...


That's what my gut was telling me to do, but my gut can sometimes be misleading, lol. I'll keep them for now, and evaluate how they are doing. If they end up being aggressive, oh well, no harm, I almost smashed them anyway 



rrussell6870 said:


> ... also keep in mind that a stronger hive will simply seem more aggressive than a weaker one due to the higher number of bees in the colony... thus a higher number of guards at any given time...


That makes sense, and I do keep an eye out for that. But to me, aggression isn't getting stung. Aggression is when you stop messing with the bees, go inside for a half an hour, then walk out the front door (which is 30 feet from the hives) and they are waiting for you, stingers prepared. 



rrussell6870 said:


> ... the next trait is "lowered swarming", which is passed more so by the queen, so it needs to be in your grafting stock...


I was under the assumption that the swarming impulse was carried on in the workers, and not the queen. To put it another way, when I hive gets crowded, it's the workers that determine that a swarm needs to be thrown off, and feed/exercise the queen accordingly. Am I mistaken about this?

So, just to clarify, the order that I need to be selecting for is (1) lower swarming, (2) pollen hoarding, and (3) "shut down". All the while I should be selecting for gentle behavior, as well as vsh (or hygienic) behavior. When you have all of the above traits in place, honey production falls in line naturally. This seems to be a good set of homework for me 

The grafting colony needs to carry #'s 1 & 3, the drone stock needs to carry #2, and both need to carry the gentle & vsh traits. 



rrussell6870 said:


> ... if its mainly in-between chambers along the bottoms and tops of frames, just cut it out and throw it... if you are using drawn drone cell foundation, just set it on an ant bed and place an empty one in its place and keep exchanging them every few weeks... if you do not have drawn drone cell frames, use wax drone cell foundation and keep an eye on the other frames as they may use them for drones once they realize that they do not have enough.


I started using foundationless frames a few years back. Overall, I love them. So much easier to deal with (in my opinion). The downside though, is you don't know what kind of comb they will draw out. Sometimes it's worker, sometimes it's drone. Usually it's consistent throughout the frame (although not all the time). For me I just mark the frame as drone or worker, and place it in it's corresponding place within the hive, as needed.



rrussell6870 said:


> The first two lines are poetry... you are doing the right thing...


Thank you. It means alot to know I'm going in the right direction.


----------



## Riverratbees (Feb 10, 2010)

How would you all rate the nicot queen rearing box for produceing queens?Verses grafting?


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>How would you all rate the nicot queen rearing box for produceing queens?Verses grafting? 

I've been using a Jenter for quite a few years now and I like it. I often end up grafting because my schedule doesn't always give me enough time to get the queen confined etc and so I end up just grafting. Also I often end up grafting the ones that don't have a plug in them as they are the right age and I need more cells sometimes.


----------



## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Honestly I havent given them enough of a fair shot yet... We ordered about a thousand dollars worth of the nicot equipment, but when we caged a few breeders in the nicot, they laid it up once, right afterwards, the bees cleaned out all of the eggs... so we gave it another shot, and the same thing happened... So I figured our bees were just too turned off by the "Oddness" of it and decided to show just how hygienic they could really be. lol. 

I have been considering using those hair roller cages for "pocket cricket cages" though... IF I ever get a chance to go fishing again...

I think the theory of the nicot is sound, and for most, it could be useful... but to me the only benefit of it ws to see if there was any added quality in queens that had never been touch be human hands (ie..grafting the larvae)... But for us, the only process that it skips is the actual graft, and grafting 110 cells only takes one of us about 3 minutes, so in our case it just slows us down and requires a breeder to be confined, which is something that I do not do.

Personal opinion??? Save the money, grafting is cheaper, educational, and relaxing...


----------



## Dancing Bee Apiary (Jan 5, 2010)

Great thread. I've been raising queens for about 10 years and just learnt a few things. Its amazing, every time I go looking for information there is always something new to learn. Just goes to show why trying to breed better queens is a lifelong pursuit.

My question; does anyone know where I can get a detailed list of what traits are recessive and which are not? I mean anything from coloring to length of the probiscus......... or even one less detailed. Thanks.


----------

