# Expensive Breeder Queens are a waste of money...



## Matt903 (Apr 8, 2013)

OK, don't everyone jump on me at once, but this is just my somewhat uneducated opinion about breeder queens. Lauri please comment since you have a background in genetics. 

Here goes: I buy an expensive breeder queen for hundreds of dollars to add genetics to my apairy. The queen is everything I hoped for and more. I breed a queen from her, the daughter flies out and mates with a dozen drones, the grand- daughter does the same, then the great-granddaughter does the same. In a few short years, I have bred out the very traits I paid hundreds of dollars for. Each of her offspirng and their offspring is mating with dozens of different drones in an open mating situation. We are not dealing with cows and horses here, where lineage can be traced and controlled. I do know that I need to add different genetics from time to time, or my breeding system will become closed, but do I have to pay hundreds of dollars, just to add different queens? Like I stated, my opinion, but I feel the best queen to breed from is one that has surived your local conditions.


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## John Davis (Apr 29, 2014)

The dilution of the genetics you describe is true and so for the beekeeper that is not producing enough queens to offset the cost or to saturate the area will find that buying the daughter of the "breeder" for 20 dollars is more cost effective. You still bring in new blood if desired but for a lot less cost. As in a lot of the discussions you have to decide what your goals are and pick a path forward.


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

but the queen did add to the genetics of your apiary right? What you need to do is fill an apiary with the daughters of the queen, then order another expensive queen the next year and raise queens from that one, and let them mate with the drones from the daughters of the original queen. That all assumes that they were say straight russians, mongrels and your on your own.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Matt903 said:


> The queen is everything I hoped for and more. I breed a queen from her, the daughter flies out and mates with a dozen drones, the grand- daughter does the same, then the great-granddaughter does the same. In a few short years, I have bred out the very traits I paid hundreds of dollars for.


Those who are buying II breeder queens are typically running a breeding program. A viable breeding program is a continual refinement of desirable traits and is not achieved by a one time purchase, or even multiple purchases separated by years between. If you're not running a breeding program, then don't buy a breeder queen. That doesn't mean don't bring in other genetics, but don't expect significant long term changes with that either. It is also a function of your local populations. 

BTW, if you buy a breeder queen, I wouldn't wait for that "everything I hoped for and more" moment. I would get busy making daughters ASAP. You evaluate the daughters, not the II mother. Sometimes II queens are exceptional, but not the norm. I have two queens that I inseminated that are going into their 3rd season. I peeked last weekend and both look incredible.


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

For the guy with one or two hives an expensive breeder queen is nuts. But about the time you want to raise even 20 queens a year those expensive breeder queens are very well worth the cost. It is NOT a one time expense. If you are raising 20 queens a year you need to think of buying one breeder queen every other year. Every third year at minimum. Some will last into the second year, but once you have used one for two years even if she is still there you need to consider another to avoid possible long term inbreeding problems. That is why Latshaw refuses to sell less than three queens to anyone. No point in him wasting his time selling someone a top drawer queen that is going to get wasted.

A one or two hive guy should just think of buying regular commercial queens. Those have very good genetics and will get you improved genetics if you buy one or two every couple of years. In either case it is all about genetics. Most of the local bees have junk genetics or worse. A small guy is never going to flood out those junk genetics no matter what he or she does. The best he or she can hope is to maintain an edge by buying some kind of decent queen. That means buying from a queen breeder that actually pays attention to his own production stock and does not do dumb stuff like using swarm cells.

Yes, I know genetics. I could teach a graduate school course in modern genetics.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

I thought the point of breeder queens was to raise queens, as a principal hive product, not to add genetics to an apiary. The adding genetics to a working apiary is the task of the F1 _daughter_ queens (first generation from the breeder queen). Those queens are much more affordable.

Unless you plan on raising queens to sell (or perhaps are a really big commercial operation raising your queens for your own use) I don't think a breeder queen is what you want to buy.

Enj.


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## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

enjambres said:


> Unless you plan on raising queens to sell (or perhaps are a really big commercial operation raising your queens for your own use) I don't think a breeder queen is what you want to buy.
> 
> Enj.


 Exactly!!


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

It depends on how the "Breeder queen " was selected. I did not want an AI breeder queen where the genetics where perfect. I want a queen that was selected from production hives for 
their productivity, gentleness, mite resistance, laying pattern, etc. I don't want someones twenty five dollar, recently returned from their mating flight queen. I want a proven, top of the line,
production hive queen. And I'm willing to pay for it. And yes, I try to get that from my hives, but *INVARIABLY*, the super queen I select, the one with twice the production and solid laying pattern,
solid frames of honey and double the bees of any other hive, is also a double queen hive. I've had 6 like that in 4 years. Now if I could figure out how to do that on purpose.....


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## Dan the bee guy (Jun 18, 2015)

Selection of the best of the offspring of the first breeder Queen to be the drone mothers of the next breeder Queen. Then continue to select the best of those to breed from while continuing to bring in the best genetics you can find while continuing to test your own stock. If you have ever had lived on a farm it's the same for all livestock . Only for all the other animals you have more control of the fathers side of the gene pool.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

II Breeder queens have several purposes. The one I think is most important, is they bring in known genetics and all her offspring should show similar traits that you are able to evaluate, and their drones (both the breeder and her offspring) should be very uniform as well as II queens should be fixed for a lot of genes/traits depending on pedigree etc... If you want to get traits to persist, get some daughters and flood drones for the next couple years from them. Yes, there will be some variability with open mating, but at least on the queen mother side, you know all the daughters should similar. The trick would be finding out with drone mother combinations produced the better queens and then maximize the mating potential in those areas. If you look at the cost of queens though, if you produce 20-30 daughters, you've recovered your costs, but to really maximize their value I think you would need a couple hundred hives and be selling daughters as well.


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## warrior (Nov 21, 2005)

If you're contemplating dropping that much cash on a queen without first setting up isolated mating yards and saturating the area around it with selected drone mother queens then you have the cart before the horse.

You right on the dilution in a straight open mating program. In a CONTROLLED mating plan using selected daughter queens in an area saturated with selected daughter drone mothers you can preserve the desired genetics through line breeding.

Genetic diversity is a great thing but it is the raw material not the end product.


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## Matt903 (Apr 8, 2013)

warrior said:


> If you're contemplating dropping that much cash on a queen without first setting up isolated mating yards and saturating the area around it with selected drone mother queens then you have the cart before the horse.
> 
> Therein lies the problem warrior. An isolated mating yard, and drone saturation. I don't care how isolated your yard is, and many drones you saturate an area with, eventually the genetics from your expensive breeder queen will be bred out, forcing you again to buy more breeders every few years, as some have suggested. For a guy who sells around 100 nucs a year, and who openly mates, I don't see the value of it. I feel I am better off breeding from my own survivor stock.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

Lets break it down $400 for a breeder queen, lets say she produces min 200 queens a yr @ $20 a piece . Turning 400 into 4000 is a smart investment if you ask me.


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## jbeshearse (Oct 7, 2009)

Harley Craig said:


> Lets break it down $400 for a breeder queen, lets say she produces min 200 queens a yr @ $20 a piece . Turning 400 into 4000 is a smart investment if you ask me.


to me, raising the queen's is the easy part. It's getting them mated and proofed out that requires lots of resources and attention to detail. I think for a 200 per year target, 5 cycles shows a need of 40 mating nucs. But if you buy a breeder queen, you don't want to waste her laying lots of worker brood ( I am assuming a breeder is instrumentally insemniated.). So you will want to graft for way more than 200 from her. Which of course require many more nucs, or you can sell cells. Or put cells into singles or 5 frame nucs (which will take about 35 days before the population of those quits dwindling and starts building. I can say from my limited experience in my area raising queens in July and August is problematic. Lots of virgins just do not make it back.


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## jbeshearse (Oct 7, 2009)

From the original thread post. It seems to op is figuring on getting only a year from the breeder queen. How long can they lay? Genetics don't start dilution until she is no longer viable. Until that time she will lay as many queens as you can probably get mated.


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

Every situation is different, but I hear the question often, is a breeder queen worth it? It depends on the beekeeper's operation and needs. I start by asking the beekeeper, what type of operation do they run and what type of bee do they currently work with. Then I ask what they would like to change. It is important to match the beekeeper with the appropriate stock. Sometimes this means trying a few strains to get a feel for the right fit. 

Next, does it make financial sense... It makes little to no sense to me, for a backyard beekeeper to buy a breeder, and I regularly share my point of view, no offense intended. I am just trying to treat others the way I would like to be treated. If the beekeeper is large enough to produce 500-1000 daughters and I think the stock I have would be beneficial to him or her then it is something for the beekeeper to seriously consider.

Good quality breeder queens are an investment. If a beekeeper has to raise queens anyway, then spending a little extra can produce significant returns. If a breeder costs $550, and the beekeeper produces 500 daughters, which conservatively produce even 1# more in honey than their queen of choice, that is a pretty good return on their initial investment if you ask me. 

Not all queens or stock are the same. Some are selected and developed for production purposes.


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## DaisyNJ (Aug 3, 2015)

I recently spoke to local queen breeder. Every year, they bring in a new breeder queen and hope to produce and sell about 1000 Queens. They dont try to "replicate" the new Queen as is, but hope to diversify available genetics in the area and try to choose from best survivors. For them its matter of increasing the genetic diversity rather than simply trying to replicate the breeder Queen as is.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

DaisyNJ said:


> I recently spoke to local queen breeder. Every year, they bring in a new breeder queen and hope to produce and sell about 1000 Queens. They dont try to "replicate" the new Queen as is, but hope to diversify available genetics in the area and try to choose from best survivors. For them its matter of increasing the genetic diversity rather than simply trying to replicate the breeder Queen as is.


So turn $400 into 20,000 is a even better imvestment


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## Matt903 (Apr 8, 2013)

Thanks. Everyone has given me a lot to think about and consider.


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## cheezer32 (Feb 3, 2009)

I do what others have said, I bring in a couple breeder queens every other year or so, breed daughters from them and distribute them throughout the rest of my hives. I don't have a ton of hives so to speak, but since starting this practice I do believe that it has helped contribute stronger healthier colonies. I would rather buy 2 breeder queens every year/other year and then breed from those myself, than purchasing 50 new queens from someone else every year.


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## umchuck (May 22, 2014)

I'm lucky, I have a bud who keeps bee and lives 100 mile away, so in the spring we trade nucs with each other my 2 for his 2, I also go north 50 mile or so and buy nucs to evaluate the queens , I get daughters from the good ones, it's starting to show results after just 2 years, have 11 out of 11 coming out of winter, pulled honey by July 15 and started treating, fed all of August and for 2 weeks after the golden rod had died off,


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

As a small-timer, my first priority would be to learn queen rearing and drone rearing THOROUGHLY. A well raised queen with poor genetics will out-perform a poorly raised queen with excellent genetics.

My next priority would be to expand my apiary to at least 100 colonies in order to support a small-scale queen production operation. That should support as many as 20 starter / finisher colonies.

During this time it takes to accomplish this expansion, one would accumulate some decent queens to breed from. My 3rd priority during this same time interval would be to learn genetics as it applies to bees. I'd be reading a lot of books, even taking classes at a college, perhaps even I.I. classes if such were offered within a reasonable driving distance.

I'd then seek an isolated mating yard that could be easily flooded with specific drone colonies.

Then when all that was in place, I'd start accumulating excellent stock with the traits I sought, raising both breeder, queen rearing, and drone rearing colonies.

Until then, it could be a waste of money, especially if you open mate in an area over-run with nasty drones that came form colonies that produce little honey. All the above-mentioned elements in place, she's still a risk. You have to introduce her successfully, then produce queens from her larvae successfully, much easier stated than done.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

JRG13 said:


> ... and all her offspring should show similar traits ..., and their drones (both the breeder and her offspring) should be very uniform as well...


I'm not sure I agree with that, though it may occur. Usually even I.I. queens' offspring have a variety of levels of expression of various traits, and selection is still an issue with F1's, *ESPECIALLY* if the F1's are open-mated, even in an isolated mating yard. 

Offspring of I.I. F2's (from I.I. grandmother and I.I. F1 mother) should show considerable uniformity, especially if both female and drone mother lines are controlled.

An exception to this would be SDI queens, which are usually fairly difficult to keep from getting superceded for very long. Offspring of Single Drone Inseminated queens will have highly uniform trait expression, and are mostly used in research. It is actually a consideration for a drone mother colony, where you are trying to increase the expression of a trait that is linked to male sex allele, but again, difficult in practice.


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## Honey-4-All (Dec 19, 2008)

Matt903 said:


> Thanks. Everyone has given me a lot .
> 
> How is this different than any other long term investment. Myopic people run into the wall of shortsightedness all the time. Next time save the wall the favor and just buy a hammer......


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

Charlie, that's why I said depending on pedigree. Some lines come advertised as a particular type of bee with certain traits, I'm assuming those are bred in such a way to be fixed for certain things... i.e. if you get a cordovan VSH Italian. Obviously some II queens will produce a variety of offspring, but that's by design for the most part. Another example, if I get a Carniolan II breeder, I'd be disappointed if any of her offspring were yellow/orange bees.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

Bringing alleles to the forefront requires selection. Beekeepers that select for overwintering, mite survival and production bring positive traits to the fore. Random nasty genetics brought in large numbers ad hoc to satisfy the market are disruptive to evolution of local resilient stocks. Teaching newcomers how to make increase and selection (compared the most talke about topic of treating mites at the local beekeeping clubs would allow open mated queens a chance to mate with quality. 

Its in these circumstances that would allow for introduced genetics to infiltrate local populations and come to the fore.


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## Matt903 (Apr 8, 2013)

Honey-4-All said:


> Matt903 said:
> 
> 
> > Thanks. Everyone has given me a lot .
> ...


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

JRG13 - Sorry if I missed that. It does look as though Matt is getting the idea, though. 

Honey-4-all - I can't count how many hammers I have repaired...inch:


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

Matt, i would only buy breeder queen if i would plan to replace all my queens that year. then do the same next year. after that you should have a good deal going on there. 

on the other hand, $600 for a queen is nuts, even if she is a breeder queen. i would just buy a few queens from different places, to add new genetics. limit your grafting, or actually what i meant is donot limit. graft each year from several hives, and let them mate in your yard. also, make nucs without introduction, let them kame their own queen. keep it as divers as possible. the reason a lot of beekeepers have bee health problems (like CCD ), and all kinds of issues is the factor i call : TOO MUCH SMARTS SELECTION. select something too much and you will get your calm bees, good honey producer, by the fact they have huge no of bees, but other things will go away. they will not keep much feed for winter, they will be weak confrunting parasites, etc. i am an advocate of letting nature work it's magic, with a touch of help from you , the farmer. 

i bought local hives, and multiplied them, introducing a few outside queens, that to be honest are now bread out. my local bees won the fight, even if there is some of those california bees left in my genetic pool, the local bees won the day, and now i only do local bees. i have some great stock, and besides a few mean ones, they are all calm enough to keep behind my garage, and not attak my kids of the dogs and people walking by. 
if you keep your diversity, if would be your grandson's generation taht might need to bring in new blood. you should not have to worry about that, like you said they are not horses or cows to worry much about lineage and stuff. 


i always say, keep it simple and it will take you far, complicate it, and it will brake along the way. too many mouving parts do not make for a long term situation.



Radu 


Matt903 said:


> OK, don't everyone jump on me at once, but this is just my somewhat uneducated opinion about breeder queens. Lauri please comment since you have a background in genetics.
> 
> Here goes: I buy an expensive breeder queen for hundreds of dollars to add genetics to my apairy. The queen is everything I hoped for and more. I breed a queen from her, the daughter flies out and mates with a dozen drones, the grand- daughter does the same, then the great-granddaughter does the same. In a few short years, I have bred out the very traits I paid hundreds of dollars for. Each of her offspirng and their offspring is mating with dozens of different drones in an open mating situation. We are not dealing with cows and horses here, where lineage can be traced and controlled. I do know that I need to add different genetics from time to time, or my breeding system will become closed, but do I have to pay hundreds of dollars, just to add different queens? Like I stated, my opinion, but I feel the best queen to breed from is one that has surived your local conditions.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Richard Cryberg gave me a heads-up in a PM that I fully agree with.

If actually planning to study genetics at a college level, some of the prerequisite courses may include calculus, physical chemistry, organic chemistry, and biochemistry. Then you may be ready to study genetics. The subject has exploded in complexity in a hurry since the days of James Watson & Francis Crick.

I appreciated the suggestions. I tutored math, calculus, physics, and chemistry for 15 years. I will have to do the chemistry classes all over again - I've read some recent college Chem. books, and there have been a number of changes since I took it. I'm not sure I could still do all the problems.

It's getting so that quite a bit of specialization is useful in developing a good bloodline. Selective breeding has been going on for centuries with only a basic idea of the practice has sufficed, but that is changing. With today's extremely competetive nature of agribusiness, the ability to stay as general as a beekeeper, and learning the specialization level of a PhD in breeding and genetics is not going to hurt us.


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

my friend i wish you all the best with your education plans. 
what i would like, if you allow me to make a request on the education hot line, is that you focus on pests. focus on finding a way to combat small hive beatle, that is the NO 1 predator now. varroua, we know how to keep in balance, it;s been 30 years already and most of us do a good job. selection of bees, we do a great job after a few thousad of years of working with that. work on the pests, how to combat them, or how to make bees bee more resistant to them. so far, out of all the studies i read, and saw, none have yet found the cure for that.
bees have a awesome reset button incorporated inside them. somehting does not work, they die or revert to the previous status quo. 
if you would come up with a way to manage or kill the SHB, you would be a milionaire, and will have shrines in all the beeyards, from florida to washington state.  




kilocharlie said:


> Richard Cryberg gave me a heads-up in a PM that I fully agree with.
> 
> If actually planning to study genetics at a college level, some of the prerequisite courses may include calculus, physical chemistry, organic chemistry, and biochemistry. Then you may be ready to study genetics. The subject has exploded in complexity in a hurry since the days of James Watson & Francis Crick.
> 
> ...


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

I could write quite a bit on this subject, but in a nut shell, here is what I wrote on the description about my queens:

"After being involved with raising livestock for over 30 years, I had realized many years ago, that if I had spent a little more money on better breeding stock in the beginning, I would have been years ahead, would have saved thousands of dollars and reached my goals a lot faster with better breeding stock VS trying to "Breed up" from average stock.

So when I started keeping bees, I immediately recognized the benefit of getting the best breeding stock I could find, even though I was still inexperienced beekeeper. I purchased inseminated breeder queens from Glenn Apiaires. (Luckily, because the Glenns retired and these II breeder queens are no longer available)

http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/

They have been exceptional bees. Like my Mountain line, they are self sufficient, disease resistant and control mites well on their own or with occasional treatments. 
No antibiotics are ever used with any of my hives, no Fumagillin. I just don't have health issues that warrant their use."
*****


As far as Inseminated queens? Being inseminated doesn't assure the queen you get will be a superstar. It just means the mating was controlled. That control only warrants merit if the human behind the selection is knowledgeable & has a specific breeding program designed for producing a superior product. A high price and prestigious name also don't a superstar make. Not without their product performing well in actuality, in real life conditions.

As for some of the math shown above in other posts, as soon as I got 10- 20 daughters from a purchased breeder queen I was happy. Anything after that was gravy. When you factor in the price of good queens and cost of express shipping these days, it didn't take me 200 queens to make the purchase worth it.

It's not just the purchase price of a breeder queen, it's also the time and resources you will be sacrificing in order to establish the daughters are worth their salt. Rearing daughters, over wintering, evaluating colony traits for a year and overwintering again before producing in any_ real_ numbers. Skimp on the quality in the beginning to save a few bucks? What is the cost in the long run?

I have two of Joe's Carniolan II queens that have overwintered well in nucs I am really looking forward to working with this spring. I trust Joe's intelligence. I trust his judgement.

This is a January photo of one of the breeder queens. Not a pretty photo but you can see in late winter she looks great and is already getting to work. She is a collaboration between Joe's Carniolan line and my Mountain line. For me it's a good sample of years of work and selection from two people that are diligent about producing a superior product. Is it guaranteed to be a superstar? Nope, but the odds are good they will be and certainly worth my time and resources to determine. 










Here's Grandma after overwintering twice. (Mountain line originated from a collected swarm in the wilderness areas near Mt. Rainier)










Direct daughter:

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Sensitive content, not recommended for those under 18
Show Content



















Both the Mountain line and the Glenn line have over wintered successfully in Alaska, Minnesota, Michigan and other Northern states with bitter weather & short seasons.


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

Matt903 said:


> In a few short years, I have bred out the very traits I paid hundreds of dollars for.


That depends on your surrounding area. 

Here's something else I wrote on my queen ad:

"-My mating areas are are somewhat secluded, not near commercial apiaries or other large beekeeping operations with southern bees. My Drone population is decently controlled with my own stock, as much as open mating can provide. "

So you can have a_ positive _side to Evolving crosses too. Some may call them mutts, some call it hybrid vigor. It depends on the quality of the end result. 

I've lived in my residence for 35 years and for the last 15 years never saw a honey bee before I got mine. There are few beekeepers with a hive or two within my distance and I provide them queen cells or queens to assure as much purity as possible.

My breeder queens are long lived and I have several generations of daughters to evaluate AND still have grandma available to graft from to retain my base line genetics. But most of the evolved crosses are fantastic. I graft about 50/50 from the aged breeders and the new crosses. 

There are times I wish I had II equipment to take control a step further, especially when working with recessive genes. But for now I'm happy with my progress.
Every once in a while I get a surprise from hidden genes from the past. 

I had purchased a Cordovan II queen from the Glenns years ago and in 2015, I started getting purple thoraxed queens & purple drones- Popular consensus is she is a Cordovan Carniolan . I lost that original Cordovan Glenn queen after the first winter, but apparently her drones left their mark. 










She's a drab little thing, kind of washed out looking, but reason she is this color is interesting. Hopefully some other positive Glenn genes also hitchhiked along with the dilute gene. Her color is just a clue of what I may have cooking in my yard and how generations away from the original breeder queens can evolve into beneficial crosses down the line. It also highlights the long lasting & under valued impact of the breeder queens drones. (Also highlights the effect poor quality drones can make, even years later if you had junk hanging around)










Below is a frame from that newly mated purple queen's mating nuc. I'm not going to complain about the genetics of subsequent generations from the original. This is a partial foundation (less) frame. (You'll notice where as an over wintered queen ( As shown above) would have filled the large cells with drones, a newly mated queen usually will not and it is filled with feed instead.)










For those of you interested, I almost immediately did a test graft of the purple queen. Of course as expected, no daughters exhibited the dilute coloring, but all will carry one recessive copy.
That batch were all remarkably identical. Striped. All over wintering in nucs, currently.

Shown here just emerged virgin.






















Matt903 said:


> Lauri please comment since you have a background in genetics.


I have no formal training, just an interest in genetics and am pretty much self taught other than High School biology and chemistry classes. I know just a little basic knowledge can go a long way and keeps experiments interesting when you have a focus and reason for your choices.

You can have all the genetic knowledge in the world, but getting predictable and reliable _results_ is really what matters, isn't it? With bees, Some things may be controllable, some things are not. Even if you know exactly what the winning 'recipe' is, if you can't control it, you results won't be replicable and will vary somewhat.

I don't have the benefit of taking samples of DNA and sending it to a lab to get genetic testing done as I did with horses. Even with those lab results there was far more that I have to evaluate and come to conclusions using my own discretion. 

Using color is a good way to learn about genetics, you have a visual aid. Then apply that knowledge to muscle mass, body type, temperament, athletic ability, etc. Then apply that to disease resistance, inheritable mutations, etc. And the list goes on and on. All that experience transferred over to bees after 30 years of breeding horses. 

That's how I produced horses colored like this and reduced my chances of producing a solid colored foal that had less value:



















With horses I got one foal a year.
But bees? They are even better than rabbits...I can get a couple generations in one season, over winter them and get a good look into the future.. Then go back to grandma and know she's worthy of my time & efforts.

I do all I can to put the odds in my favor, then sit back and let Mother Nature work her magic.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Lauri - AWESOME POST! :applause:

Croc - Not my invention, but the best beetle fighting device I've seen is a screened bottom board with a deeper-than-usual slide underneath the screen.

1. A plain piece of plywood slides in for powdered sugar dusting. It comes out as soon as the dust settles.

2. A sticky board with a grid goes in for 24 hours, capturing mites and all else that falls through the screen. Take your mite per square area count.

3. After 24 hours, a tray of vegetable oil slides in for the rest of the time, drowning small hive beetles, mites, earwigs, and other baddies. 

Not too far of a stretch to modify an existing SBB into one of these SHB trap / mite sticky board / sugar dust catcher rigs, though you may have to carefully select or make a tray to fit, or expand the chamber to fit the tray, which may involve a saw and some glue, depending on your SBB and your tray.

I place the tray in dry, and add the veggie oil through a hose fitted to a cap.

I can't believe how many bugs this rig catches! WOW. Try it, and I hope you and your bees have much success. No need for a shrine - it's not my idea, but you could raise one to the person who invented this, perhaps more than one person - the inventor of the SBB, and who ever modified it into an SHB trap / multi purpose IPM hive floor. I'll try to find this info and post it.


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

Ha! That was a long version of saying, even if you are a little guy (or gal) with no real knowledge of genetics, if it is reasonably practical for you to start with a good breeder queen, you are probably wise to take advantage of the work done by those that have more extensive experience and knowledge.

I'd suggest you at least are confident in your over wintering ability, confident in your ability to successfully introduce the breeder into a new colony, are comfortable and somewhat successful with queen rearing in general and have reasonable control over outside influences.


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## warrior (Nov 21, 2005)

Matt903 said:


> warrior said:
> 
> 
> > If you're contemplating dropping that much cash on a queen without first setting up isolated mating yards and saturating the area around it with selected drone mother queens then you have the cart before the horse.
> ...


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Lauri said:


> Ha! That was a long version of saying, even if you are a little guy (or gal) with no real knowledge of genetics, if it is reasonably practical for you to start with a good breeder queen, you are probably wise to take advantage of the work done by those that have more extensive experience and knowledge.
> 
> I'd suggest you at least are confident in your over wintering ability, confident in your ability to successfully introduce the breeder into a new colony, are comfortable and somewhat successful with queen rearing in general and have reasonable control over outside influences.



I feel that post #30 really started to move this thread in a negative direction (no offense kilo), but thankfully Lauri posted this response (and your other posts) to put things back into perspective. Congrats on your success!


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## johng (Nov 24, 2009)

Here's my take on a II breeder. I buy one every year from VPQueens. I'm only running about 80 hives so I don't have a large apiary. But, I like to start making splits in late Feb-early March. It's almost impossible to find queens or cells that time of year. Which means I need to make them myself. I feel better about my queens by starting out with a II Breeder that has hopefully already came from good genetics. I like the Pol-line 

If I make cells for splitting, requeening, or selling then the cost of the Breeder queen becomes a lot easier to swallow. I sell enough queen cells alone to pay for the queen. I have backed away from selling many mated queens because of the extra work and resources it takes. I sell cells almost exclusively. They are a lot less work than mated queens. If your grafting already it does take much extra time to go ahead and make extra cells. It has been working out good for me.


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## LittleByLittle (Dec 8, 2015)

It really does depend on your location, operation, and goals. 

In addition to be a small scale backyarder, I have the misfortune of being located about two miles (as the crow flies) from a commercial operation that supplies bulk packages from down in Georgia every spring and stocks their hives with the same. Investing in a high dollar breeder queen would be like setting money on fire for me.

Just the same, I sure do appreciate the work being put in to the selective breeding programs by those who are investing the resources (knowledge, time, money...) toward selecting better bees.


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