# How to select or breed bees that survive without treatment



## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

How should a beekeeper in the south with between 10 and 100 hives select or breed bees that will survive well with no treatment, be docile, and produce a reasonable amount of honey?


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

Start with needing at least 3 beekeepers who can share stock. This gives a viable population to avoid inbreeding effects.

Put together a list of traits desired and a protocol for evaluating each trait. As an example, open a colony, then bounce a leather ball on top of the frames to see how many stings it gets in a specified time period. Put that number down as the sting index. Weigh each candidate colony at harvest to determine the weight of honey harvested and the weight of honey still in the colony for summer/winter stores. Put that number down for honey index. Do this for each trait. IMO, the best way to evaluate mite resistance is to do some type of mite count over an extended period of time.

With a list of traits and a protocol to evaluate them by, build a spreadsheet with each colony's records and start selecting for the best 3 colonies out of at least 30. Use those 3 colonies to produce queens for at least 1/3 of the colonies being evaluated. Rinse and repeat the next year.


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

IMO depending on how mite resistant your stock is, it might be better to start from scratch than look for a trait in your bees. It might be like turning a Shih Tzus into a Wolf. The whole time your selective breeding you may be fighting the genetics in your own apiary. 

The bees have already done it, find those genetics, either another TF beekeeper or feral survivors. 

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/queens-for-pennies/

FP has a good plan but I would start with some good genetics first then go from there.


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## bentonkb (May 24, 2016)

Mite tolerant 
Docile enough to handle
Productive 

It seems like any breeding program will give you the first two. Colonies that fail the mite tolerance test will die. It is probably better if you dispatch them in the freezer when it looks like they will die off anyway. Colonies that fail the docile (enough) test will be culled, of course, by the beek.

The only thing that isn't automatic is the productivity.


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

Doesn't selective breeding include flooding an area with drones you picked the mama of? 

To selective breed for me here where I keep bees I'd have to ask several nice beekeepers with their own apiaries to please go away. I get very well-bred queens because of their bees. Also have a high rate of queen breeding success. (very high) 
So many hives in this area. It's a blessing or a curse depending on perspective. I'm going with the flow and I'm betting my beekeeper neighbors are benefiting from my bees just like I do from theirs.


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## bentonkb (May 24, 2016)

aunt betty said:


> Doesn't selective breeding include flooding an area with drones you picked the mama of?
> 
> To selective breed for me here where I keep bees I'd have to ask several nice beekeepers with their own apiaries to please go away.


Only if they are working against you by breeding AHB or buying lots of queens without regard for mite resistance. 

If your neighbour is buying a lot of crappy queens it should be pretty easy to raise your own and turn him into your customer.


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## dennis crutchfield (Aug 5, 2016)

I would take one step at a time, and when you have that fixed, add another selection to want in your bees. myself I had enough hives with mites , that I chose thru a mix of different bees to allow time to give me the resistant bee. but with that I lost around 80 hives to get 10 that survived mites without treatment. but they were hard to handle and acted like killers. Now I have over the last few years brought in different lines to freely breed to them. but also kept a area separate t keep some of my original hives. but I believe it can be done. there are several lines out there that have resistant qualities. the big thing to me is integrate management . breaking up brook cycles and such. this year I will start using essential oils if needed but staying away from chemicals. I have the resistant's bred in, they also make a lot of honey. now I am working on breeding a more gentle bee. but each time you add a new selection to your bee's you can dilute the genetics enough to create new problems. my experience is higher than my grammar experience so read carefully


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

aunt betty said:


> Doesn't selective breeding include flooding an area with drones you picked the mama of?
> 
> To selective breed for me here where I keep bees I'd have to ask several nice beekeepers with their own apiaries to please go away. I get very well-bred queens because of their bees. Also have a high rate of queen breeding success. (very high)
> So many hives in this area. It's a blessing or a curse depending on perspective. I'm going with the flow and I'm betting my beekeeper neighbors are benefiting from my bees just like I do from theirs.


How many evaluations have you made on their bees to determine they are crappy? If none as I suspect, how would you know?


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Buy pure Russians. They already have a century of bond method and so should put you 100 years ahead of of anything you are likely to do in your backyard. They come with a decade of objective scientific research to support them.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

> Buy pure Russians. They already have a century of bond method and so should put you 100 years ahead of of anything you are likely to do in your backyard. They come with a decade of objective scientific research to support them.


 100 years of exposure to mites won't gain a thing for management traits. The Russian breeders have about 20 years of working on management and honey production traits which can be a significant step in the right direction. The problem with Russian bees is that they have a very strong swarm tendency which is almost impossible to stop once started.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Fusion_power said:


> The problem with Russian bees is that they have a very strong swarm tendency which is almost impossible to stop once started.


Your opinion stated as though it was a proven fact....or do you have anything objective to support it?
The '20 years of working' on traits has been done thoughtfully and objectively. As I said....it seems light years ahead of anybody else, in my opinion. 

Or the op can start from scratch.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I would start with local survivors and propagate those until you have the number you want. I would try to get cutouts or swarms if you can, to get some of the microbes that are in the survivor colonies. I would try to get them on clean combs with natural sized cells. It's better to work your way up than work your way down. If you can start with some that are surviving and propagate those rather than start with 100 colonies and then have to work with what survived. The local survivors have already taken the losses. No need for you to.


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## dennis crutchfield (Aug 5, 2016)

your right on what you said, but when I started no one ever gave good advice like that so I had to learn the hard way .


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## EastSideBuzz (Apr 12, 2009)

Good luck with that.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Perhaps the most effective mite tolerant / resistant trait is mite mauling, where the bees actually bite the ectopic mites in half and drop them through the screened bottom board. To identify the trait, look for mite pieces in the sticky board. Combining the mauling trait with a brood break should give high overwintering success. Combining that with a limited hygenic trait expression should really keep the mites in check. Too much hygenic trait expression often means low production.

Russian bees have the mite mauling trait, and a Winter brood break, so they survive mites quite effectively, but they build up too slow for almond pollination. So add some Russians to breed with your apiary and with locally-adapted feral stocks. Breed lots of colonies from the resulting mutts, however bad, that express the mite mauling trait in a high percentage of mite load-to-mite-halves-in-the-sticky-board ratio. Kill the drones of the lowest performing colonies, and re-queen them from the better-performing bloodlines. Probably looking at 3 to 5 years getting a stock started.

Then, after you have established the mite mauling trait, as your colony numbers come up, get even more selective until you have an acceptable overwintering rate. Then start breeding for other traits - reduced swarming tendency, honey and pollen production, buildup rate appropriate for your area, docile behavior, etc. 

Just make sure you get the mite mauling trait well-established first, and be ready to accept a host of undesirable traits to get there, then eliminate them later when you have a good clutch of breeder queens with that as a base bloodline stock. You can't start selection without the necessary traits present. The rest is selection, "rinse, refine, repeat".


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

Michael Bush said:


> I would start with local survivors and propagate those until you have the number you want. I would try to get cutouts or swarms if you can, to get some of the microbes that are in the survivor colonies. I would try to get them on clean combs with natural sized cells. It's better to work your way up than work your way down. If you can start with some that are surviving and propagate those rather than start with 100 colonies and then have to work with what survived. The local survivors have already taken the losses. No need for you to.


:thumbsup:


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## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

bentonkb said:


> Only if they are working against you by breeding AHB or buying lots of queens without regard for mite resistance.
> 
> If your neighbour is buying a lot of crappy queens it should be pretty easy to raise your own and turn him into your customer.


Not really because your virgin queens are going to mate with his drones and you'll produce crappy queens too.


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

1. I'm grateful for the responses, even the less helpful but humorous response in the case of Eastside.
2. I would welcome input on this question from folks with a background in genetics, such as JSL and JRG13, regardless of whether they treat.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

To select for a trait, there is an underlying assumption that trait already exists in the population of bees you are starting with. Once you have determined the trait, you need a way to measure it objectively for comparison amongst colonies. Using our own case, we have determined over time which traits are important to us, and which are not. Objectively measuring them is a different matter, but without measurements, you cant really see if there is any result coming from the selection process.

For us, one of the keys was identifying how things can be measured efficiently. If I want to start measuring things relative to mites, that's a lot of extra work, over and above what we already do in normal day to day management of the bees. A few years ago I was intrigued by the concept of freeze tests to evaluate hygenic traits, but after participating in a round of tests and counts, my conclusion was, it's far more work to do the freeze test on 20 colonies than it is to just go out and apply a mite treatment to that same group. A freeze test tells me if they are hygenic, but, it doesn't tell me if they will make honey or survive the winter.

Measuring honey production is a different story, we already do most of the required work already. The method we settled on, all of our supers are numbered, and we keep track of which colony each super is placed on, it's not a lot of extra work. The other thing we added to our workflow, every super gets weighed and that number recorded before the frames come out for extraction. I work on the premise that empty extracted supers are all fairly consistent in weight. When we are finished extracting, I have a rough number for the all up tally of empty weights, and I have a number for each super when it had the honey still in it, simple math to estimate how much honey came from each super, so now I can relate this back to how much from each colony. This gives me an objective number for comparing colonies in terms of honey production, and does so without adding a huge amount of extra effort into the process, just a little record keeping at two steps. First, when placing supers we write down where, and when extracting we cross a scale just before frames come out for uncapping.

The other spot in our flow where we keep detailed records is during the spring. In February we pop lids to put in first round of feed supplements. At that point, we write down a count of how many frames the cluster is on. In March we do the first inspection that involves pulling up frames, and we write down how much brood is in each colony. Again, it's not a lot of extra work added to the regular workflow, just involves taking notes when we do these two things we are already doing. The important part here is to be consistent in the method. If we are counting how many frames of bees, do it the exact same way on every colony so the records are directly comparable across the board.

When I step back and look at the bigger picture, these points of measurement are directly related to 'what matters' to us. The larger spring frame counts are likely the colonies that will be able to produce surplus brood for nucs to be sold in in the spring. The colonies with the larger honey production are responsible for the bottles of honey that end up for sale at the farm stand. As for dealing with mites, my thought is that is incidental. If a colony survives with a higher mite count, and produces a large honey crop, it's a more productive colony than one with a very low mite count, but a very low honey crop.

The other trait that's important to us, survival of our winters here at 50N on the ocean. Measuring this trait is trivially simple, and doesn't require much in the way of record keeping. A dead colony in February is a dead colony which has selected itself out of our pool of available stock. Honey production records from last year dont really mean a lot if it's dead in February. We do pay attention to the lineage of the deadouts, and watch for a parental trend. This year as an example we had 4 dead colonies at the first Feb feeding. 2 of them were import queens, and 2 of them were smaller clusters that I was already questioning in October. The two imports had reasonably large clusters in October, but the NZ queens have a reputation here for not surviving the first winter, and those two indeed didn't survive. Boxes with dead colonies, plenty of feed still in the frames, but they have self selected already.

As for some of the more esoteric traits, I'll use the example of mite biters mentioned earlier in the thread. To figure out if I have any, first I would have to buy screened bottom boards for all of my colonies, then spend an inordinate amount of time counting things on those sticky boards with a magnifying glass. To what end ? If I found a colony with a high tendancy to bite mites, I can then say I have mite biters. Does it matter ? To figure that out, I look at my honey production records. If it turns out I have mite biters, but they aren't efficient honey producers, then yes, I have a trait in the apiary, but that trait doesn't have an economic value to me unless I start raising queens from that line and selling them as 'special queens' to folks that value the trait. Even so, it'll probably be a hard sell of a few queens because I dont have the 'name brand pedigree'. If I was really interested in selling queens into that market, I would start by purchasing stock with the name brand pedigree, then propogate from it. But that's a whole different revenue vector and business model, has nothing to do with honey production.

Then there is 'gentleness'. Our experience, and it may just be the bees we have, all of the colonies are gentle on a flow. During a dearth, they all get somewhat testy, and the farther we get into August and September, the testier they get. But we have noticed a bit of a trend, the really testy ones seem to have fewer stores. Maybe they dont store well, maybe they get robbed out more, I dunno. What I do know, the testy ones tend to have less honey in the supers, so they have less value to us anyways. I think it's a side effect that gets selected away by the honey records. Only once have I popped a lid on a colony and by the time I'm done, put a big X on the lid to mark it as 'never propogate from this one'.

I know that the methods we have settled on tend to 'urinate upwind' against what a lot of folks hype online, but, after doing this for some years and homing in on what matters, and what doesn't, we now have a method that works for us. We have records of the items that matter, and pay no attention to the rest, it's just distracting noise. If there is a specific trait that we decide is a 'must have', then I'll happily pay up the 500 or so to get a breeder highly selected for that trait and raise some F1's myself, or, I'll pay up the 40 bucks a pop to get the F1's from somebody already producing them. It would cost me a lot more than that in terms of time and effort to try identify it in our existing stock, and it's likely a wasted effort because the trait may or may not already be there. It's just more efficient to pay up and buy something that is known to have it at the get go.

ofc, having these records is just part of the process. How to use them, another issue. But the short version is, 2016 honey records will drive part of the selection process in 2017, and we dont expect to be measuring results from that till 2018. This is NOT a short term project, and it's a big mistake to think one will see 'results next quarter'. If you aren't working on a 5 year plan, but focussed entirely on 'results right away', this wont work.


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

Grozzie2, wow. Thank you.



> From Grozzie2: "We do pay attention to the lineage of the deadouts, and watch for a parental trend."


That is a particularly helpful comment.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

grozzie2 said:


> To select for a trait, there is an underlying assumption that trait already exists in the population of bees you are starting with.


So in regard to mites and mite resistance or tolerance. IN order to breed for those traits they need to already exist? I don't agree with that since breeding is what is intended to bring the trait into existence but okay. I am trying to process your idea.
You then say you measure this trait in some way relative to mites. I am sort of thinking that if bees have the trait you are looking for and the trait is mite resistance. then where are the mites to measure in respect to? Mite resistant bees would not have mites, is that not correct?
Of course there is the option that bees posses only some degree of resistance. Since mite population in any given colony at any given time can reasonably vary between none and lethal. I am not sure that a mite count is all that reliable of a measurement.

Now in regard to the assumption that the trait already exists. The King Ranch looked at the Angus cow and saw the best meat producing breed of cattle. Problem is they where fairly expensive to keep due to requiring fairly high quality feed in order to produce that meat. Then they looked at the Brama. Nasty meat but able to live on just about anything they ate. And they thought to themselves. wouldn't it be great if you had a cow that could eat like the Brama and make meat out of that forage like the Angus. Did that trait exist at that time? No not technically. you either had the trait to eat just about anything or the trait to make fine meat. but the combination did not exist. Until they bred the Brangus. So I am not sure I agree that the trait you are trying to get actually exists. It may exist in parts spread out among multiple blood lines. Even so it is far from assured you will be able to combine them into a single trait in a single blood line.


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

Your whole post is an attempt at humor is it not?


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

Its been touched on but I'm starting to focus in on site configuration. I would like my best queens mating with my best drones. At least to a greater extent than they are now. I am considering a 3 pronged approach. Some A.I. for some of my queens, an apiary set up where bees from 2 sites have a common DCA, and an element of open mating to maintain genetic diversity. I'm guessing there is a sweet spot between closed and open mating systems that limits dilution of survival traits, and brings in enough genetic diversity to avoid inbreeding.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Daniel Y said:


> So in regard to mites and mite resistance or tolerance. IN order to breed for those traits they need to already exist? I don't agree with that since breeding is what is intended to bring the trait into existence but okay. I am trying to process your idea.



I dont have mite resistant bees. Please explain to me how I can breed that trait into my bees. It's a fascinating concept to just manufacture the trait out of thin air, and I'm wondering why none of the professional breeders have done it already. There is a huge demand for mite resistant bees today, but nobody has any that withstand the test of time and measurements.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

grozzie2 said:


> I'm wondering why none of the professional breeders have done it already. There is a huge demand for mite resistant bees today...


the estimate is that 95% of the almost 2 million colonies here in the u.s. are owned and managed by large commercial entities. they demand bees that brood indiscriminately (not a mite resistant trait) and make lots of honey. due to the nature of those operations it's not likely they would ever be able to withhold treatments and so far getting mite resistant bees hasn't been a priority for them.

for some perspective on this you may want to read randy oliver's series called "the varroa problem", scroll down this page to november 2016:

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/articles-by-publication-date/


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Richard Cryberg said:


> Your whole post is an attempt at humor is it not?


Typical response of those with no real answers. Attack others as if they are stupid.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

*Daniel* - in post #21, you suppose out loud, "mite resistant bees would not have mites, is that not correct?"

I propose to you that it may or may not be correct. 5 cases:

1) The bees are NOT mite tolerant / resistant, but have no mites yet.

2) The bees are NOT mite tolerant, and now have mites, but have not yet been killed off by the mites.

3) The bees ARE mite tolerant, have some mites, but keep the mite population low, but not zero.

4) The bees ARE mite tolerant, but are dealing with a horrific mite infestation, weakening them to near destitution, highly vulnerable to winter kill and other diseases and / or pests.

5) The bees ARE mite tolerant, but happen to have no mites, or dealt with them sufficiently to eradicate the mites.

Case 3,4, and 5 are related to your statement. 3 and 4 would be cases where it is not correct, 5 is the case where it is correct.

Regarding the cattle: The traits (good meat is in the angus, survival upon poor feed is in the brama) exist in each type of parent cow or bull. Seeing the combination of traits expressed in the offspring from the two types, the breeder selects from the best expression of the traits, weighed most important scoring highest, least desirable trait scoring lowest. Select, breed, refine the standard, repeat. There MAY be a winner in the lot, but it may take years of breeding the two source types, brama and angus, to get a satisfactory combination of traits in the offspring to begin a bloodline ( a breeder might get short cows that need good feed to make poor meat). Cows can't make 200 queens a year like bees can, so the selection process is slower, mostly requiring great numbers of cattle and time.

No offense intended buddy, I hope this helps.

*Richard* - lighten up, eh? Genetics is not entirely intuitively obvious, what with recessive traits, the rare instances of mutations, let alone in bees with their haploidodiploidy, and occasional expression of thelytoky. It takes some serious reading and processing to get the ideas that drive it. It fooled science until Mendel got one brilliant idea - maybe some traits don't always show up, but "hide out" for a generation or two. It took until 1955 for Watson and Crick figure out the shape of the DNA, and we're only just recently publishing genome codes. I know you are intelligent, so is Daniel. He's just not as far along as you in this topic at this point. He is making leaps and bounds after some brutal mistreatment here on Beesource a few years ago. That he is still here is commendable. Bravo, Daniel.

Even the science of statistics has blossomed since I was in college. I read a Statistics book recently - tons of new stuff, especially for scientists. To an extent, genetics gets treated statistically. I find myself reading up on new scientific formulas that have massive impact on biological studies quite often.

Chemistry has evolved into almost an entirely new language. Biochem? I sweat when I try to read recent studies involving it. Fortunately, a few people are kindly pedantic in their wording. Wikipedia saves my tailbone again and again. If this stuff were easy, we'd probably already have mite tolerant / resistant bees, assuming the traits are out there. 

Cheers, mate.

*Squarepeg* - Thank you for that link! I did as Randy Oliver's article suggested. I watched the video linked in reference number [4]. The bacteria growing from 0 to 10 to 100 to 1,000 times the concentrations of antibiotics in the mega-Petri dish in only 11 days is convincing. It's up to the bees to make it, not us. The breeders are the hope. That video is a clear picture of what will happen with the bees soon enough.

*Iharder *- Your post #23 is right on for a starting phase. Breed a lot of them. Then apply artificial selection some years later. II helps get some good combo's out there, OM keeps up the diversity. Diversity can surprise us and be our friend, especially when conditions change. 

Next phase, after the numbers are up, the bloodline base is established, and further improvement has become the priority, then is the time to apply selection. Harsh selection works miracles, especially when you are ready for it.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

kilocharlie said:


> Daniel - in post #21, you suppose out loud, "mite resistant bees would not have mites, is that not correct?"
> 
> I propose to you that it may or may not be correct. 5 cases:
> 
> ...


Your comments on numbers in regard to cattle goes back to some of my comments a few days ago about the number required for effective breeding period. In this case the King ranch at that time and may still be the largest ranch in the world. they accomplished this over something like 30 years of breeding in cooperation with many other ranches. Something of a world wide effort. Now beekeepers can choose to believe they are exempt from these sort of requirements. I still don't think they are. and I am talking about real world where they accomplished something and what it took. So you all can look at what was required to achieve results or believe you don't need to do the same. up to you.

As for the various conditions and whether they have resistance or not. for me you have to take a step or two backwards. I don't buy what is being called resistance as resistance in the first place. I call it suicide by installments at best. So when others say they are breeding for resistance I say no they are not. not because they are not finding the traits they consider resistance. it is because I don't agree that those traits are resistance.

So as far as 3, 4 an 5 of your list go. I would describe them as.
3. bees with no need to kill themselves off yet.
4. bees in the process of killing themselves off.
5. Bees that attempted to kill themselves off but didn't quite have what it takes. so they may be leaving it up to the mites.

Now seriously if mites are resistant and being overran. where they really resistant? Again reason to call into question what people are calling resistance.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

On 5), I should have written it: "..or have dealt with the mites sufficiently to eradicate the mites _long enough before Winter for colony survival_".

Mite tolerant / resistant traits are one thing, actual Winter survival is another different thing. Often due to multiple stressors, the year being different timing than the usual to which the colony is adapted (it happens), beekeeper error, neighboring orchards spraying on the wrong day, other reasons.

It's not just mite tolerance. Other pests, virus kill (vectored through the mites), population (both mite and bee populations) initial loads, population dynamic change, local rainfall and natural feed availability, beekeeper practices, several other factors all play in to things.

That a colony expresses a trait that helps fight mites does not guarantee that it survives. The lack of a trait does not ensure that a colony dies. Averages over time cause the trends, events in the immediate-right-now can really screw up averages, wiping out all the data, biasing the data, rendering it moot.

Minus a very, very lucky mutation, a trait must be present in order to pass on to a following generation through sexual reproduction, but it's only guaranteed if both parents are homozygous for the trait. If they are heterozygous, its a roll of the dice. The dice may be loaded, but even loaded dice only affect the chance of the outcome. Time, variation, isolation, and differing local selective pressures make for most changes. Mutations make for a few.

I agree fully about the cattle. We're saying the same thing. Large numbers speed up the process, 30 years is a short time for a new cattle breed. In the case of breeding, artificial selection eliminates the undesired traits after you get the combination of desired traits you seek.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Yesterday some information was send to me about a beekeeper in Germany who is a commercial, breeds buckfast bees, is a member of Arista ( a breeding program to select for VSH queens) and started a mating place for everyone to mate his queens.

He has +- 100 colonies. His bees are on small cell size for ten years ( 4.9 foundation). They build very good combs, this is normal with buckfast breed here.
I do not know yet if he treats but many with Arista only treat once in winter with OA. I hope to find out.

Why I post this? I like how he works with his drones. This is not new to you professionals I´m sure.
But when establishing a group of tf beekeepers working together this might be important with searching for a mating place.

Quote and translation:



> Von Bedeutung ist, dass bei der natürlichen Begattung nur die stärksten und vitalsten Drohnen der Königin folgen können. Das stellt eine natürliche, von Menschen unbeeinflusste, Form der Selektion dar. Allerdings ist es schwer, diesen Vorteil ohne Zuflug von Fremddrohnen zu realisieren.


It´s important, that with open breeding only the strongest and healthiest drones are with the queen. This is natural selection without human influence. But this is hard to do without foreign drones being around.



> Das Erreichen von Zuchtzielen mit einer hohen genetischen Erbfestigkeit (wie z. B. die Reduzierung der Schwarmneigung) ist aus Sicht deutscher Imker nur schwer ohne eine gute bzw. mehrere gute Belegstellen zu erreichen. Nicht jede Königin kann von einer Belegstelle kommen, deshalb ist eine Basiszucht über die mütterliche Seite mit Standbegattung die konsequente und logische Fortsetzung der Zucht.


High results with an established genetic program ( for example less swarming) in Germany are hard to achieve without a good place or a number of mating places. But because not every queen may be mated in such a place, basic breeding with the mother line in your home location is the logically and basically continuation of breeding.



> Ziel einer jeden Belegstelle ist es, zu jedem Zeitpunkt der Begattungsperiode für ausreichend viele, vitale und zeugungsfähige Drohnen einer bestimmten Zuchtrichtung Sorge zu tragen. Die erfolgreiche und verantwortungsvolle Führung einer Belegstelle ist eine Aufgabe der ein hohes Maß an imkerlicher Erfahrung und Fingerspitzengefühl voraussetzt. Der Nachteil gegenüber einer Inselbelegstelle bezüglich des Zuflugs fremder Drohnen lässt sich nach unserer Meinung gut durch den Aufbau eines hohen natürlichen Drohnendrucks ausgleichen. Wir sind inzwischen sicher, dass unsere Belegstelle bezüglich der Sicherheit alle Voraussetzungen zur züchterischen Weiterentwicklung der Buckfastbiene aufweist. Unsere Zuchterfolge sprechen für sich.


The aim of every mating place is to have enough healthy and able drones with specific traits in one period of mating season. This work needs a professional beekeeper`s experience and care. The disadvantages of our mating place compared with a mating place on an island is in our opinion compensated by raising a high number of drones. We are sure our mating place is suitable now to continue the breeding of the buckfast bee. Our success proves this.



> Auf einem großflächigen, windgeschützten Areal von mehreren Hektar Größe ist eine lockere Aufstellung der Begattungskästen möglich.


We have much space in the area protected from wind to distribute the apidae or nuc boxes.



> Die Drohnenvölker werden grundsätzlich mit Honig- Futterteig gefüttert, um etwaige Trachtlücken und Schlechtwetterperioden zu überbrücken. Die Drohnen müssen zu jedem Zeitpunkt ihres kurzen Lebens mit den Füßen im Nektar stehen! Wir gehen jedoch davon aus, dass die Versorgung mit Nektar und Pollen im eigentlichen Sommer durch eine in unmittelbarer Nähe liegende Wildwiese, und durch die angrenzenden großflächigen Waldflächen im Vogelschutzgebiet gewährleistet ist. Damit ist eine optimale Kondition unserer Drohnenvölker während der gesamten Begattungsperiode gewährleistet.


The drone colonies are fed with honey pastry principally to bypass a bad flow or bad weather. The drones must be up to their neck into nectar. We have a good supply of nectar in our environment though.



> Die Führung von Drohnenvölkern und die Führung von Wirtschaftsvölkern sind zwei völlig verschiedene Dinge. Aus diesem Grund werden die Zucht und die Produktion von Honig separat voneinander geführt. Zucht und Vermehrung lassen sich niemals mit einem maximalen Honigertrag vereinbaren! So werden beispielsweise ab Anfang April zeitlich versetzt Drohnenrähmchen ans Brutnest gehängt. Ab ca. dem 25. Mai verfügen wir dann über ausreichend Drohnen verschiedener Altersstufen. Die Benutzung des Absperrgitters zum Honigraum verbietet sich, um den Drohnen während längerer Schlechtwetterperioden Schutz vor aggressiven älteren Damen zu bieten. Selbstverständlich verbleibt ein Teil des Honigs bei den Völkern. Anfang Juli werden alle Drohnenvölker entweiselt, die Drohnen dürfen sich dann bis Ende Juli/Anfang August einer besonders guten Pflege erfreuen. Da uns danach die Begattungsergebnisse nicht mehr überzeugt haben, schließen wir die Belegstelle ab Ende Juli.


The stewardship of drone colonies and honey production hives are entirely different. Because of that we separate this managements. Breeding and propagating honey production are not to be arranged the same way.
Drone frames are used chronologically and put into the colonies from april on. Middle of may we have sufficient drones of different age. No queen excluder is used so the drones may seek shelter from watchers and defensive workers while staying at home in a bad weather situation.
Needless to say a part of the honey stays with the colony. 
With july/august all queens are taken out and the drones are treated with loving care from now on.
The mating place closes end of july because we were not satisfied with the later results.
[/quote]


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>If your neighbour is buying a lot of crappy queens it should be pretty easy to raise your own and turn him into your customer.

The easier "sell" is to GIVE your queens to your neighbors. It's a win-win. He gets good queens and you get good drones...

>Start with needing at least 3 beekeepers who can share stock. This gives a viable population to avoid inbreeding effects.

I've been raising my own queens for 43 years and never saw any inbreeding effects. I think the biology of bee mating is such that you would need to raise a lot of sister queens and maybe even do some II to get serious inbreeding. In other words, it could be done, but you would have to create quite a bottle neck to do it.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

why do people assume the neighbors bad genes. if in fact they are even bad. are going to ruin their good genes. assuming they are even good. But not the other way around. Is it not just as likely your good, advantageous, better suited to survival genes are going to overwhelm theirs? aren't there colonies going to suffer and dwindle due to the lack of advantage of mite tolerance. and most likely fail to reproduce. even produce drones or even live than the superior genes? If you think about it. isn't the ready recognition that one genetic line will in fact fail when confronted with any other line indicates it is already known to be inferior and expected to suffer as such? Wouldn't a ready source of mite infestation only provide ample opportunity for these superior blood lines to improve on their mite tolerance? Or is it possible that any indication of mite tolerance is really so fragile that it is probably impossible to actually develop. These not often seen behaviors simply get wiped out before they have a chance. And could be a significant reason bees don't in fact develop them enough to resist mites.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Practical real life experience and answer to the OP:
I have been forced to select on the basis of survival for at least 9 years. My selection before that was based very much on survival only, but in 2001-2008 I maybe could do some choises between lines of bees, when they both survived. I chose of course bees that were more to my like(docile, more honey, no swarming). But even then I soon relized that moderate brood area is better than big one and bees with some "character" may actually be better than docile bees. So my breeding selection has based nearly only to survival and general health from 2001.

Taking this into consideration it was very astonishing to get feedback from a commercial queen producer, who bought breeders from me 2014, that the several hundred daughter queens produced from those breeders have been very good production queens when they have been in normal treated prodution colonies. They have some more "character" than their normal stock, but on the other hand they must have a bunch of other good qualities because they are ordering more breeder queens this summer. 

So this makes me wonder what is the role of breeding if I have selected only on basis of survival and despite this after 13 years (2001-2014) bees have good production qualities. One explanation is that the starting point bee material was so superior (pure bred buckfast). But what makes them so resistant that I still have bees? 

On one hand breeding has gone slowly(deterioration of production qualities), but on the other hand breeding has gone quite fast (survival, varroa resistance). Suits me.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Daniel Y said:


> why do people assume the neighbors bad genes. if in fact they are even bad. are going to ruin their good genes. assuming they are even good. But not the other way around. Is it not just as likely your good, advantageous, better suited to survival genes are going to overwhelm theirs? aren't there colonies going to suffer and dwindle due to the lack of advantage of mite tolerance. and most likely fail to reproduce. even produce drones or even live than the superior genes? If you think about it. isn't the ready recognition that one genetic line will in fact fail when confronted with any other line indicates it is already known to be inferior and expected to suffer as such? Wouldn't a ready source of mite infestation only provide ample opportunity for these superior blood lines to improve on their mite tolerance? Or is it possible that any indication of mite tolerance is really so fragile that it is probably impossible to actually develop. These not often seen behaviors simply get wiped out before they have a chance. And could be a significant reason bees don't in fact develop them enough to resist mites.


Often I have this same thoughts. I´m just now searching for an isolated place to mate our group´s survivor queens but i´m not sure if this really is necessary. 
The surrounding colonies are bred for production and gentleness, mite tolerance breeding just started but so far most beekeepers are not interested because the treatments with acids still work.

My survivors are not gentle ( but they are not defensiv like africanized bees) and I don´t know about productivity since I made only splits and left the honey.
What if the genes mix? My drones influencing the colonies around and genes of gentleness and productivity coming back?
Queens are using several drones with different genetics.

Am I too much prejudiced and fearful in my approach? In the end everyones bees have to put up with their neighbors, sooner or later. As long as some survive....
I am still amazed I have those survivors which have strongly been mite infested in fall.


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

Juhani Lunden said:


> bees with some "character" may actually be better than docile bees.


I completely agree with this statement! I raise about 20 queens in my backyard for local topbar nucs each year. I like to order in one or two treatment free queens from other areas just to improve the genetics in the local line I am propagating from. I can tell some of these queens have been selected for very docile behavior but I wonder at what cost to their ability to survive the pressures they now face in a beehive.


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## AmericanApiaries (Jan 27, 2017)

Daniel Y said:


> How many evaluations have you made on their bees to determine they are crappy? If none as I suspect, how would you know?


Where did she say that her neighbor's bees were crappy? She said she could not selectively breed since there are quite a few other beekeepers in the area, so she would not be able to control the drone side of the equation. As Fusion and MBush suggested, I think making a concerted effort with other beekeepers in your area is the way to go if you want to make any significant progress with open mating.


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## CrazyTalk (Jan 27, 2015)

Daniel Y said:


> why do people assume the neighbors bad genes. if in fact they are even bad. are going to ruin their good genes. assuming they are even good. But not the other way around. Is it not just as likely your good, advantageous, better suited to survival genes are going to overwhelm theirs? aren't there colonies going to suffer and dwindle due to the lack of advantage of mite tolerance. and most likely fail to reproduce. even produce drones or even live than the superior genes? If you think about it. isn't the ready recognition that one genetic line will in fact fail when confronted with any other line indicates it is already known to be inferior and expected to suffer as such? Wouldn't a ready source of mite infestation only provide ample opportunity for these superior blood lines to improve on their mite tolerance? Or is it possible that any indication of mite tolerance is really so fragile that it is probably impossible to actually develop. These not often seen behaviors simply get wiped out before they have a chance. And could be a significant reason bees don't in fact develop them enough to resist mites.


In a "natural" environment, his "bad" bees would die off, and your offspring would take over their hives, and spread the better genes. 

But in a managed system, when your strong hive sees his weak hive and goes to rob (and kill) it, he puts up robbing screens. When his weak queen fails, he replaces it. So you have this constant influx of unsuited genes coming in from the outside world (florida/texas/etc purchased queens), and your queens keep mating with his drones. The changes you make to his lines just go away because his queens fail and get replaced, whereas the changes his lines make to your stick, because your queens are surviving.

What you need to do is either give him some queens (as MB suggested), or get him to start raising his own queens, so your genes actually get to stick around a bit.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

If you really want to breed bees, I'm a believer you need to go II to incorporate and stabilize the genetics as best you can. It's more for a production strategy though, so that in some sense you know all the daughters produced from that breeder should be relatively stable and equal in terms of maternal traits inherited and their drones should donate the traits as well even from the F1 daughters. I will hopefully be successful in producing some II queens this year to see how it goes, but it still takes a couple years to evaluate daughter queens and how stable inheritance is maintained in an open breeding of daughter queens with a lot of other bees around. 

On the flip side, I think open mating also brings the opportunities of gaining traits you don't have as well. So, someone said they don't believe they can get mite resistance because there is not mite resistance in their bees... Well, there's at least two flaws with this statement... first is, I highly doubt resistance is based on a single dominant/recessively expressed loci, it's most likely a multi loci trait(s), so perhaps you just haven't acquired the proper combination of traits to express it effectively, but all the traits do in fact exist in your population. Secondly, each time a queen is mated, there's the possibility of bringing in resistance from an outside source via your queens mating with drones carrying these traits. Breeding for multi loci traits or even some recessive traits is a numbers game at time. Also, your stock can only change via new generations of queens being hatched and mated so if you're only producing a few queens one time a year it really limits your chances of bringing in new alleles. The counter argument is resistance seems to get diluted very quickly, which again points most likely to a lot of resistance traits being multi loci traits and therefore highly susceptible to being diluted if they are not a large part of the naturally occurring genotype. 

Also, you need to think about how dilution comes about and think about hive density and the importance of isolation if you're really trying to keep your traits fixed. For example, say I have 3 drone mothers, given some drone frames/ comb, lets say they produce 10 times more drones than a hive just on foundation or with limited drone comb, giving them roughly a 30 hive strength drone donation. It now only takes 30 hives nearby to dilute your drones to 50%. 60 hives is now 33%, 90 hives is roughly 25%. I know of at least two commercial yards 1/4 mile from my bees, probably say 250 hives total, so with three drone mothers, I believe that's around a 10% population of my drones as a whole.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>why do people assume the neighbors bad genes. if in fact they are even bad. are going to ruin their good genes. assuming they are even good. 

If the neighbor is raising their own queens and not treating I would assume they are good genes. If the neighbor is buying queens from treated operations from California or Georgia or Florida every year, I would assume they are not what I want my queens mating with.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

I would be happier if my neighbors raised their own queens. Even if they treated, at least some of my TF genetics would get incorporated to bounce back at me. 

Again the message needs to said to improve bee health. Avoid bringing bees in from the outside, raise most of your own. Buy locally when possible.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

it can be pretty simple. Dont treat, anything that lives through the winter, breed from. Yr two breed from anything that survived 2 winters. Yr 3 breed from anything that survived 3 winters, and if none did, breed from 2 yr survivors. Keep doing this untill you get bees that survive 3 yrs. This will keep you sustainable. as first yr colonies build up produce a little honey, second yr they produce an abundance of honey and 3rd yr you can split and bust them up with queen cells to start the cycle over. once sustainable. Keep doing the same thing but now only breed from the survivors that produce the most honey or least aggressive, whichever you deem is more important.


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

Even the big commercials and the breeders lose colonies to mites, sometimes lots of colonies. So even in these bee populations there is continual pressure towards increasing resistance. If resistance is possible with the genetics we have to work with, it will gradually spread throughout the population as long as the mite pressure remains high, and we know the mite pressure is high. Even professionally managed bees die from mites and viruses.

Can you compare the losses today with what happened in the 90s? If a big almond pollinator went treatment free, would he have 100% loss? 75%? 

Some small scale, non-mobile BEEKs have good results, but could a big guy do the same? I doubt it, really, but that is a matter of management, not the bees fault. If we transported huge herds of cattle or hogs here and there across the country, mixing them every day with other herds doing the same, they wouldn't last long without constant vaccinations and antibiotics. 

The big boys will always have to treat, no matter what bees we end up with.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

The assumption that commercial queen stock has non of the mite suppression characteristics is untrue. 
I'm participating in a genome sequence project, to make a long story short, I have commercially produced queen stock topping the charts for hygienic behaviours. KONA.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

Ian, hygienic behavior is useful, but not the end all. I too had some excellent results for hygienic behavior, but most (not all) of those hives died. Meanwhile my best hive that has survived 3 winters TF is mediocre at hygienic behavior. I think she is good at surviving viruses though. It's going to be an interesting year as I have grand daughters of the original hygienic Saskatraz queens still going strong in nucs. So it will be interesting if they have picked up some viral resistance from local stock, and if my local stock has picked up some hygienic behavior. 

Were your bees tested for mite mauling as well? I am still awaiting results from mine.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

What I'm saying is, hygienic is one of those desirable characteristics when assessing hives for mite suppression. Commercial queen stock proves to show highly favourable traits in that respect. 

One thing I like about Albert and his Saskatraz project is that I like how he evaluates queen stock. I have yet to hear him slag commercial breeders


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

One thing I'd like to add, 
Righteousness does not belong in a good breeding program. If most of these discussions could substitute purpose for righteousness, I think those muddy water would clear


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Ian said:


> Righteousness does not belong in a good breeding program.


Likewise, pre-conceptions dont belong in that program either. Starting out with an attitude of 'my bees are good, neighbors bees are bad' as a pre-conception pretty much dooms any objective evaluations.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

We sell $$$$ genetics in cattle. We have a sound breeding program. We have a bull standing here with a $100G price tag. 
Guys in this business who slag their neighbours stock is bad business practice. 
Breeding is a program, 
Just drop all the commercials slag


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

Ian said:


> We sell $$$$ genetics in cattle. We have a sound breeding program. We have a bull standing here with a $100G price tag.
> Guys in this business who slag their neighbours stock is bad business practice.
> Breeding is a program,
> Just drop all the commercials slag


If the trait exists and doesn't hurt pollination/honey too much, it will spread throughout the commercial stocks. Poor resistance is being culled out by the mites. Even with all the treatments being done, colonies are being lost, which means no propagation into the next generation. The people who are really into treatment may be a generation or two behind the hard core TF, but the mites won't let them get too far behind!

What were the stats I read earlier? Something like 40+% of TF hives die every year, and 30-something% of treated hives. Not that much of a gap, really. Of course the treated hives are probably the big, experienced producers more than one guy in his back yard with two hives. Those big producers put huge stresses on their bees, and still keep 60-70% alive. That's pretty amazing. Those are not weak bees.

I wonder what the % loss to mites is in the breeder's yards. That is controlling what the commercials get. Sure, the breeders treat, but still lose colonies to mites. If the bee genetics allow it, resistance will spread.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

A 10% difference eh.,


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

Ian said:


> What I'm saying is, hygienic is one of those desirable characteristics when assessing hives for mite suppression. Commercial queen stock proves to show highly favourable traits in that respect.
> 
> One thing I like about Albert and his Saskatraz project is that I like how he evaluates queen stock. I have yet to hear him slag commercial breeders


I hope it didn't sound like I was slagging Albert because he is doing interesting work. I am thinking about bringing more of his queens in if they have traits that my bees are missing. I have one excellent performer that has survived her 2nd winter from Pederson Apiaries, who I hear has connections with the Saskatraz project. 

I wouldn't expect any queen (TF or otherwise) from far away to do well here because the disease environment is likely different. But that is not a slag on the program they came from. 

But I do think the future is smaller local apiaries producing queens for their region. There are structural genetic problems with too few people producing too many queens in too few places. Then there are ecological problems associated with moving too many bees around.


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

Ian said:


> A 10% difference eh.,


Don't quote that figure, I am working off memory here of what I read in another thread about some stats that was done. Even if 10% is accurate, the big guys stress their bees a lot more than the little guy who hardly manages his bees at all. Unmanaged bees are not that different from feral bees in how they live/die. 30 or 35% loss is excellent work, given modern diseases and pests, indicating that the breeders are doing something right. Consider that in nature, on average, any given hive will only reproduce ONCE, and all others die. All those swarms, and only one lives on average, maintaining a constant bee population.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

I just talked to a more experienced local keeper with a fair number of hives. He is looking at 40% after a tough winter (for here) while I'm about 50 % overall TF. But I don't really consider myself TF as I am barely in the game 3 years. Yet I have 2 x the hives I had last year, so it may be sustainable?

But the numbers to really look at are trends over time with experience. There is lots of natural selection of keepers as well.


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## AmericanApiaries (Jan 27, 2017)

lharder said:


> I just talked to a more experienced local keeper with a fair number of hives. He is looking at 40% after a tough winter (for here) while I'm about 50 % overall TF. But I don't really consider myself TF as I am barely in the game 3 years. Yet I have 2 x the hives I had last year, so it may be sustainable?
> 
> But the numbers to really look at are trends over time with experience. There is lots of natural selection of keepers as well.


What race of bees are you using? how much honey do they make?

Jonas


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

Interesting talk at our last convention, an over view of everything Saskatraz.
They are involved with sequencing, and making interesting progress in that area. He's looking at the effect treatments have on the bees "mite suppression genes" ... (way over my head). Makes a guy really reconsider any type of treatment within their selection yard.

http://www.saskatraz.com


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

I'm going to try to get a few of those hybrid Saskatraz queens down here from the breeder working in conjunction with Olivarez. I will make sure to keep everyone updated on how they do.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

AmericanApiaries said:


> What race of bees are you using? how much honey do they make?
> 
> Jonas


The Saskatraz queens have a healthy dose of Russian in them, while my best performing bees originated from Kona queens a few generations removed. So mutts basically. I don't know how to answer the honey question as I have been making more bees than honey. The local line again seems to be superior putting on really good weight in the fall compared to the others. But lots of factors are at play, some hives are healthier than others which would suppress productivity. Coming from Saskatchewan, the Saskatraz queens aren't keyed into local flows compared to the local bees. But that doesn't mean they aren't good bees and they aren't making a good genetic contribution to the local population.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

Ian said:


> Interesting talk at our last convention, an over view of everything Saskatraz.
> They are involved with sequencing, and making interesting progress in that area. He's looking at the effect treatments have on the bees "mite suppression genes" ... (way over my head). Makes a guy really reconsider any type of treatment within their selection yard.
> 
> http://www.saskatraz.com


I think dipping your toe in that pool will yield lots of information for you. The losses will be high, but when you start getting some strong survivors the wheels start churning.


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