Queen mating / inbreeding !!!

[Jed D]

Your opinions please...
We are going to start the season with 20 colonies , these have all come from 4 different genetic pools. i.e. 4 queens that originally came from different areas..

Currently these colonies are on 4 different sites ' but with sister / daughters colonies sited next to each other !!!!!

Would it be better to move related colonies away from each other ???? for breeding purposes . i.e. ( reduce inbreeding )
We am in a very fortunutately position to have more sites , than we currently use, some with good distance between them..

Following on from this , I'm also wondering weather to provide more space for drone brood. i.e.
1 . Any colony on the demaree system, could have a complete brood frame of drone foundation. ( always kept in the bottom B/box )
2 . Smaller colonies , could have a shallow frame in the B/box , on which they can drawn drone comb on..

 

[BeeJayBee]

Your colonies are unlikely to be isolated, inbreeding is unlikely.

Check out a couple of threads about Drone Congregation Areas
http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=8491
and
http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=14927

 

[For want of a better word]

Bio security must be a consideration if you intend to start moving colonies around... I have now bought a pair of wellies and suits for each apiary, each already has dedicated smoker tools and buckets for wax clippings, steralising solutions and of course a box of disposable gloves... anything I have forgotten?

Yeghes da

 

[dpearce4]

Bio security must be a consideration if you intend to start moving colonies around... I have now bought a pair of wellies and suits for each apiary, each already has dedicated smoker tools and buckets for wax clippings, steralising solutions and of course a box of disposable gloves... anything I have forgotten?

Yeghes da

yes as the food critic in Ratatouille says a bit of perspective.

 

[For want of a better word]

yes as the food critic in Ratatouille says a bit of perspective.

No .. I use solid crownboards !

Yeghes da

 

[dpearce4]

No .. I use solid crownboards !

Yeghes da

haha.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Bio security must be a consideration if you intend to start moving colonies around... I have now bought a pair of wellies and suits for each apiary, each already has dedicated smoker tools and buckets for wax clippings, steralising solutions and of course a box of disposable gloves... anything I have forgotten?

Yeghes da

Separate vehicles for each apiary.....................you never know

 

[For want of a better word]

Separate vehicles for each apiary.....................you never know

Thinking back to those horrific years of "foot & mouth", I have considered a tyre disinfection tray.... but I usually walk from the car parking area to the apiary, and change boots there.


Yeghes da

 

[Jed D]

Separate vehicles for each apiary.....................you never know

Tools and gloves , yeah 'But your just getting Extreme....

Anyway , some interesting reading there , Thank you..
I'm aware of DCA's ' But no idea where they might bee....

Fair point on the isolation.. I don't think there's much chance of it, in our neck for the woods.. ( BEEKS all over round here )

My thinking really came from the fact that, as I was reading my notes from last year and noticed that , we ended up with 3 out of 5 colonies on some sites being related..

Back to the extra space for drone brood ! ( complete frames or shallow frames in b/boxes )
Do many of you do this ? Not for culling reasons ' but just to add more drones from good colonies to the mix..

P.S. All of this could be my thinking about something , that I've no need to even consider ' but being in Norfolk !!! it does cross ones mind..

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Thinking back to those horrific years of "foot & mouth", I have considered a tyre disinfection tray.... but I usually walk from the car parking area to the apiary, and change boots there.


Yeghes da

therefore you walk out of the apiary with your everywhere footwear potentially infected and spread any nasties all over the parish

 

[For want of a better word]

Back to the extra space for drone brood ! ( complete frames )
Do many of you do this ? Not for culling reasons ' but just to add more drones from good colonies to the mix..

Drones are the key to bee breeding and improvement.

Drone flood you chosen open mating site by putting drone foundation in breeder queen colony brood area.... and feed 2:1 syrup
six to ten colonies set up like this will produce plenty of drones

As for DCAs... Beowulf Cooper's book Bees of the British Isles has some good descriptions on what to look out for................

Yeghes da

 

[Jed D]

A ha , I think i'm getting there....
Drone flooding sounds good..
As ever I am planning to try and mix a few idea's ( sure to get me in a muddle )..
I'm gonna try some demaree set ups , on our better colonies and this is where the mixing of idea's comes in..
A complete frame of drone comb ( always kept in the bottom box ).
My thinking !! lots of drone from our better colonies and no drones caught in QX..

therefore you walk out of the apiary with your everywhere footwear potentially infected and spread any nasties all over the parish

I wondered that..
Many moons ago , I worked in the world of delivering animal feed.
It was considered good practise , to spray wheels on trucks ( as they could go from site to site )
If and when a site / farm went in locked down mode !!!
We would have paper over Suits , over Boots and wash trucks and delivery pipes before each delivery ' but this was not done on a daliy basis..

 

[For want of a better word]

therefore you walk out of the apiary with your everywhere footwear potentially infected and spread any nasties all over the parish

I wash off by boots AND walking shoes in disinfectant, large tray fitted with foam and filled with ? lysol... biosol...disinfectant.... seems to do the job!


Yeghes da

 

[Goran]

I am more and more leaning to idea of sticking to one line and favorizing inbreed. Discarding the bad and keeping the rest. This isn't at all my idea, I just read how some queen growers do. Good argument is also that you standardize the stock with all good and bad things.

 

[Nige.Coll]

If you get inbreeding then the eggs are generally removed so the brood pattern will give you some idea if it is happening.

 

[B+.]

I am more and more leaning to idea of sticking to one line and favorizing inbreed. Discarding the bad and keeping the rest. This isn't at all my idea, I just read how some queen growers do. Good argument is also that you standardize the stock with all good and bad things.

I wouldn't recommend that approach. Prof. Bienefeld showed over 25 years ago that you will get swarmy bees

http://www.apidologie.org/articles/apido/pdf/1989/05/Apidologie_0044-8435_1989_20_5_ART0009.pdf

 

[Goran]

Thanks for the info. I will read it more thoroughly later. This practice with inbreeding I read also experience from Germany. There wasn't mentioned swarminess, in fact quite opposite.. But advertising can do wonder.. or not..

 

[Finman]

Your opinions please...
We are going to start the season with 20 colonies , these have all come from 4 different genetic pools. i.e. 4 queens that originally came from different areas..

Currently these colonies are on 4 different sites ' but with sister / daughters colonies sited next to each other !!!!!

..

I tried this 10 years ago. I had good quality queens from 5 different sources.
When I crossed them, I believed that I get a good genepool with hybrid vigour. But what I got, was swarmy and more agressive bee hives.

Non swarmy and non aggressive are gene errors in bees. In crossings errors will be healed and bees develope towards their original features.

I have nursed 20 hives for decades. Couple of times I have met serious inbreeding broblems: Week laying, dead brood, non flying workers, poor resistancy against nosema, sensitiveness to chalk brood.

Yes, I have studied genetics in university. I know more about these things than ordinary beekeeper.

 

[Finman]

Thanks for the info. I will read it more thoroughly later. This practice with inbreeding I read also experience from Germany. There wasn't mentioned swarminess, in fact quite opposite.. But advertising can do wonder.. or not..

I cannot understand how inbreeding can add swarminess. And what is swarminess among Carniolans, Black Bees and Italians, they are different things.

Inbreeding is usuall way to make the breed pure conserning some feature, like non swarming. Artifial insemination of bees is a common trick to breed some feature.

And swarming is bees' habit to reproduce. It is not a malfunction. It is the most important thing to all living creatures.

 

[B+.]

I cannot understand how inbreeding can add swarminess. And what is swarminess among Carniolans, Black Bees and Italians, they are different things.

Inbreeding is usuall way to make the breed pure conserning some feature, like non swarming. Artifial insemination of bees is a common trick to breed some feature.

And swarming is bees' habit to reproduce. It is not a malfunction. It is the most important thing to all living creatures.

I think that an unselected stock, of whatever sub-species, exhibits a range of behaviour. The paper discusses the effects on inbreeding in queens and workers in a highly selected population:

"Inbreeding of workers leads to calmer and less aggressive colony behaviour, whereas inbreeding of queens has the opposite effect. Swarming tendency increased with increased inbreeding of workers.
In contrast, queens with moderate inbreeding give colonies with the highest swarming tendency. "

It is wrong to think of a Instrumental Insemination as a "trick". It is a technique that allows combinations to occur under controlled conditions. Some combinations would not normally occur in nature (e.g. single drone matings) but are conducted to achieve a definite purpose. This may involve combinations which are intended to emphasize characteristics such as varroa tolerance.