Queen genetics, how important is this for honey quantity?

[Father Fox]

A couple of my colonies have done well this year, but another couple on the same site have really low honey yield. All disease free, all queens less than two years old. I suspect that the low yielding queens genes are responsible, and so plan to requeen with new queens f1 s ? Any recommendations ?

 

[REDWOOD]

Lots of queen breeders will state their queens are good honey producers, a study of Brother Adam's book will give you some indication

 

[Jimy Dee]

I dont really have any advise for you or answer to your question other than (disease apart ) not all hives perform the same - for reasons unknown to man kid - and it might not be solely down to replacing the queen. You might find after replacing queens that you still have poor honey producers next year so dont be too fast in spending your money on new queens. Have bad were they at producing honey ? If they die over winter they may have been fighting a disease not apparent to you now. It is really impossible to tell.

 

[YorkshireBees]

A couple of my colonies have done well this year, but another couple on the same site have really low honey yield. All disease free, all queens less than two years old. I suspect that the low yielding queens genes are responsible, and so plan to requeen with new queens f1 s ? Any recommendations ?

Personally if it were me I would breed my own queens from the more desirable colonies. Not solely based on Honey production but also on over wintering / spring build-up / calmness etc.

Why buy in queens if you have all that's necessary to breed your own??

 

[Jimy Dee]

 

[Finman]

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What is bee breeding. ... It is genetics...and selection

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[Finman]

) not all hives perform the same - for reasons unknown to man kid .

Breeding is to select best hives. Best features are quite many.

If you breed, it is best to know why some hives are better than others.

It is very difficult to select mother queen from under 20 hives.

 

[YorkshireBees]

Breeding is to select best hives. Best features are quite many.

If you breed, it is best to know why some hives are better than others.

It is very difficult to select mother queen from under 20 hives.

Well I think I do ok with less than 20. What I feel is important is not breeding from ONLY one stock, you need a certain amount of diversity in an apiary.

 

[Finman]

Well I think I do ok with less than 20. What I feel is important is not breeding from ONLY one stock, you need a certain amount of diversity in an apiary.

If you feel so and what are you trying. Non swarming stock is very difficult to get but easy to loose. Most of beekeepers are very satisfied with their own bees even if they breed them them not at all.

It depends too what kind of hives neighbours have nearby.

 

[YorkshireBees]

If you feel so and what are you trying. Non swarming stock is very difficult to get but easy to loose. Most of beekeepers are very satisfied with their own bees even if they breed them them not at all.

It depends too what kind of hives neighbours have nearby.

Of course it depends a lot of hives nearby.

I select on overall performance based on over wintering, honey production during the season, non-swarminess, temperament (not overly protective but not too docile either), health and anything else I note during the year.

I would love to have more hives to be able to be more selective and have an apiary that I could control the drone gene pool in but the reality is that atm I'm pretty much running as many as I can with the spare time I have and in terms of apiary selection don't have a massive amount of choice without committing more time to travel.

My point initially was that some beekeepers seem to eager to spend money buying Queens when you can produce then on a small scale pretty easily yourself.
Maybe I should change to Queen producing and selling!?

 

[Finman]

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Maybe I should change to Queen producing and selling!?

Brittish weather is very suitable to it.

 

[Ely]

Brittish weather is very suitable to it.

Depends how good the summer it is. This summer yes great. 2 or 3 summers ago, terrible. Nothing varies as much as british weather

 

[REDWOOD]

Have a read of this
http://www.apiservices.com/articles/us/adam.htm