The reply from my friend in Oz- as promised...
The Ligurian bees on Kangaroo Island are inbred and have a relatively low brood viability. (If my memory serves me correctly, a study showed that some 30% of the worker eggs do not hatch due to inbreeding). I understand that there is now a program to try to improve the stock on Kangaroo Island. I strongly support the efforts being made there to maintain and improve these bees.
Our bee breeding program started by selecting the best available stock in the state of the Italian strain, which is most suited to our conditions in Western Australia, following the quarantine closure of our borders in 1977 due to and outbreak of European Foul Brood disease in the eastern states. Western Australia is still free of the disease. Prior to the border closure, beekeepers purchased queen bees from a number of queen breeders in the eastern states, or bred their own. Italian, Caucasian and Carniolan bees had been imported previously and hence bee population in Western Australia had a mixture of genes from these races, although the Italian bee was more dominant due to its popularity amongst beekeepers.
Beekeepers in Western Australia gave their best queens of the Italian strain to the Department of Agriculture for breeding and further selection to establish the program. Once we had selected the most productive stock, we use artificial insemination (AI), using homogenised semen, to further breed and select the best bees. We commences the program with 20 breeding lines. Pooled the semen from drones from the queens in the 20 lines was homogenised and used to inseminate eight virgin queens raised from the best queen in each of the 20 lines. These inseminated queens became the next generation. By using homogenised semen, we could then accurately evaluate the performance of each queen in the program because the semen in each queen was the identical. Hives/queens within the program were evaluated under commercial beekeeping conditions for twelve months with some hives in a good year producing more than 200 kg of honey. Queens were evaluated for honey production, brood viability, temperament, disease resistance, brace comb and colour. the best queen in each line was then used as a breeder to maintain each breeding line.
In 1991, after 10 years of breeding, the Department of Agriculture sold the bee breeding program to commercial beekeepers who formed a consortium to continue the program. Because AI was relatively expensive and time consuming, the beekeepers do not use AI but now use Rottnest Island as an isolated mating station to mate the virgin queens bred from each of the lines, each year. Last year, 665 queen bees from 21 lines were successfully mated on the Island and these are currently being evaluated by the commercial beekeepers.
I know this explanation is a little long-winded, but I hope it explains the difference between our program and that on Kangaroo Island.
