Queen bee colour grading chart

[Somerford]

Does such an item exist ?

I was thinking about this when I noticed a comment from another beek today on the forum regarding the colour characteristics of the bee he could see in an image.

If there was such a colour grading chart avaiable, with perhaps numbers against the colour grades, one could then ascertain (if you were so inclined) to what extent your bees are more Carniolan, or more black, and then be able to pass this on

In other words, one person's 'black' is maybe another person's brown/black and so on.

I hope someone can make sense of this confusing sprawling !

regards

S

 

[Bcrazy]

Why don't you suggest a colour code for queens?

It never ceases to amaze me the ammount of beekeepers who can not find the queen when looking for her to mark or clip, as for the colour coding I honestly think it would bee a waste of time because to work out what the queens line might bee is a guessing game and to me it serves no purpose.

Regards;

 

[Somerford]

I think some confusion on your part, BC - what I meant was some way of grading queens (those for sale or as part of nucs) so that a national queen colour grade could be established - a bit like the way other animals are graded.

With so much talk about colour and the effects this may have on swarminess, honey production, temperament and the number of new beekeepers coming online, I thought it might help so that, if one was to offer a queen of Carniolan stock or italian for example, one would expect it to be yellow, but to offer a grade against it's actual shade might hint towards the purity of said strain.

regards

Stephen

 

[Bcrazy]

Hi Stephen,
OK I see what you mean but in all honesty something like this should in my opinion bee released by BIB BA or the BBKA as guide notes to beekeepers on second thoughts it takes too long from BBKA ( note the definition of a Nucleus).That took ages to come from them.
What about you writting one up and submit it to any queen rearing organisation?
Sorry Stephen but members should breed their own queens and not rely on others who have no real knowledge what the queens are going to produce.


Regards;

 

[hedgerow pete]

Well I am off to B and Q to get some colour cards, Does ayone want some moonsorry black queens, I can try breeding some montary blues later,lol

seriously the man has a point here, maybe bee's and bee breeding should look at the modern and better ways of animal husbandry used by farmers to identify and grade there animals , there will be of course peoples own ""understandings and descriptions"" of the rules but you could have alist and then get people to grade them out of ten say ??


queen colour
swarming habbit
nervousness on frames
aggression
collection ability
the list could be as long as you like

I personal belive that that somerford has hit a very rusty nail on the head here.
Beekeeping as a whole is a hobby rather than a organised farming group so there is as much chance as herding cats, but say that someone did lay down a simple set of comparision charts that everyone at lest looked at and tried to follow, then may be a better system of bee husbandry could start????

 

[dilys]

The snag with all this is that colour is not a particularly good indication of race. It probably used to be when all races were pure but they are now all mongrelised to some degree and the thing we need to know is the degree of mongrelisation and which is the dominant race in their genetic makeup. There is already a proven reliable test and that is wing venation in the workers. It allows you to sample a statistically significant number of bees in a colony and it is believed to provide a far better idea of race than queen colour.

Dil

 

[Somerford]

Dilys, yes - I am aware of the Venation test - but I am thinking more along the lines of a test one can do by eye, quickly, and that doesn't involve loads of tests/stats etc .

It would make sense to say that if a bee was yellow, it's offspring more black/mixed their offspring more yellow that the characteristics one expected with the yellow bee would prevail in the third generation - I am presuming here that a yellow drone had mated to cause this.

What I am suggesting is a simple grading system - to prevent arguement when people say 'my bees are yellow, or my bees are black' only to have the next beekeeper say - well they don't look very bl**dy yellow to me, more like orange and your black bees - well they aren't as black as mine etc etc.

A standard by which we can all compare.

regards

S

 

[Poly Hive]

The problem is it just don't work like that.

If only it were that simple but it's not.

PH