Queen breeding books

[dano41]

Hi can anyone recommend a good book.Anyone read Breeding super bees by Taber?

 

[RoofTops]

Queen Rearing by Vince Cook which you can get from Northern Bee Books is a readable description of one method. I use his system and it works for me but I might try using a Cloake board next year. Queen Bee by David Woodward describes the use of the Cloake board and is very comprehensive but perhaps not for the beginner. Hooper's GTBAH has some brief descriptions of a few methods. What I haven't found is a single book which describes queen rearing and the use of mini-nucs. Ron Brown wrote a book about mini-nucs but I haven't read it yet.

However, the principles behind most methods are the same. Take a well fed strong colony, remove queen and then introduce very young larva and let the bees start queen cells. The queen is re-united 24 hours later and the queen cells put above a QX. There are as many variations as bees in your hive but the basic idea is the same - under queenless conditions the bees will start raising their own new queens and experience has found that a queen-right colony (when the queen is re-introduced) produces better queens than if they are left queenless throughout the open cell period.

 

[Poly Hive]

Taber is good for an over view. RIP

Cook never worked for me in Scotland but different climate and bees so.... debatable.

What do you want to achieve?

PH

 

[Hivemaker.]

Background to bee breeding by John H Atkinson.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Bee genetics and breeding......Thomas E Rinderer.

 

[beebreeder]

Hi All
"Breeding Queens"By Gilles Fert a great little softback book with some very good images and timetables for queen rearing, only available in UK s/hand in english now as far as I know.
kev

 

[dano41]

Thanks for replies will check out those books.

 

[Midland Beek]

Snelgrove: Queen Rearing in England.

 

[OXFORDBEE]

Bee genetics and breeding......Thomas E Rinderer.

You'll need a stong coffee for this tome!

Mesquita wrote an introductory book on Elements of genetics with special reference to the honeybee.

Ruttner(1976), The instrumental insemination of the queen bee which was superseeded by Moritz(1989) under the same title; Published by Apmondia.

Ruttner also wrote a book on Queen Rearing published by Apimondia in 1983.

Ruttner also wrote a book on Breeding Techniques and selection for Breeding the Honeybee which was published in English by BIBBA(1988).

A book called Beekeeping and conserving biodiversity of honeybees (Sustainable bee breeding Theoretical and practical guide) contains some info too. It was part of the BABE project and was published in 2005.

The Hive and the Honey bee (2000) contains a section on Bee Genetics and Breeding by Page and Laidlaw.

The Woodward book on queen rearing is a good read as well.