Queen pedigree

[B+.]

What is the 1b & 4a all about?

If you have ever looked at your own family tree, you will have drawn a chart something like the one I have attached. It shows the lineage of a particular queen along with information about the performance of its parents. In this way, it is similar to the pedigree that breeders of other animals might use and will form the basis of a decision on whether the animal is suitable for breeding purposes or not.
Of course, there are differences between the mating system used by honeybees and those of other animals we might be interested in (i.e. multiple mating of the queen). So, it is important to understand that the sire (male) side of the pedigree is not a single individual but will usually be many. To achieve this, breeders will take a number of colonies to isolated areas where the only mates a virgin queen will find are those from the selected colonies.
On the pedigree shown, the Dam (female) has a letter "a" as a suffix and the sire (male) has the letter "b". The numeric prefix is simply a means of identifying where in the hierarchy an individual lies. So, queen 1254 (1a) in my records mated with drones from a number of sister colonies (1b) on the German island of Neuwerk. The sister colonies were all daughters of another queen (4a) which had a similar pedigree. There is a limit to how many mature drones a colony is able to support so a number of daughter queens are used to ensure that enough closely related drones are available.
Within each box, you will see the identification number of the queen, the breeders name and address, and a reference to a korschein (this is an independent assessment of the suitability of the queen for breeding purposes...a kind of breeding licence). As I have explained elsewhere, the queens identification number is a composite of the breeders association, breeder number, the sequence number of the queen (1a) in the breeders record book for that year, and the year of the queens emergence. This information is available on www.beebreed.eu
In order to decide if a queen is suitable for breeding, it is not enough that it has a pedigree. It must perform well in a number of areas against the 5-year moving average for the population. In that way, a queen whose colony performs above 100% will be better than the mean for that trait. For example, The mother colony (2a) of the queen I have shown (1a) provided a surplus of honey that was 9% higher than the 5-year average. The mother of the queens that provided the drones (4a) provided a yield that was 19% higher. So, if I were only interested in this single trait, I could select queens with the highest breeding values for honey yield and mate them under controlled conditions. Their offspring, would (on average) have a breeding value for honey of (109 + 119)/2, or 114%. Of course, inbreeding plays a part so I would have to be careful to choose parents that were unrelated.
You will appreciate that this is a brief explanation and there is much more to it but, I hope, it answers the question and gives you an insight into what bee breeders do.

 

[For want of a better word]

Thank you B+

Our own BIPCo Cornish Amm breeding program follows similar lines... unfortunately we do not have many totally isolated mating sites that are accessible in the British Isles!

Yeghes da

 

[B+.]

Thank you B+

Our own BIPCo Cornish Amm breeding program follows similar lines... unfortunately we do not have many totally isolated mating sites that are accessible in the British Isles!

Yeghes da

There is a facility within BeeBreed for people who beed A.m.m too but we have no system for validating purity the way they do in Germany. If there was enough support, I think Prof. Bienefeld would allow access to BeeBreed for co-ordination at a national level

 

[beebot]

Thanks. Really interested in the breeding. Is there anything else you could recommend in the way of reading material?

 

[B+.]

Thanks. Really interested in the breeding. Is there anything else you could recommend in the way of reading material?

You could start with Friedrich Ruttners book "Breeding Techniques and Selection for Breeding of the Honeybee" which was actually published by BIBBA many years ago.
Alternatively, a lot of the BeeBreed information is included in coloss. The pedigree and breeding value estimation are referred to here http://coloss.org/beebook/I/queen-rearing/4/1/4.1.2.-pedigree-data but it is in other areas too

 

[MuswellMetro]

getting my head around bee genetics i was not at my best so i avoided the question when i took module 7

Am i right that with the drone egg not being fertilised and having only 16 chromosomes by mitosis and there being only a failed meoisis division with therefore no crossover then each queen will produce two half brothers drone both different and drones in each type will have no variants, which is not what was said in the previous thread

or have i got my mitosis mixed with my Meoisis and there can be crossover in the mitosis division

 

[B+.]

have i got my mitosis mixed with my Meoisis

There are lots of good resources that explain things like this. Here's a pretty good one (its a little out of date but good enough to revise the subject from) http://waynesword.palomar.edu/lmexer2a.htm

 

[MuswellMetro]

There are lots of good resources that explain things like this. Here's a pretty good one (its a little out of date but good enough to revise the subject from) http://waynesword.palomar.edu/lmexer2a.htm

/thanks, for pointing me in the right direction ,I have dug the Eigil Holm and Ruttner out of the attic and i now understand the process better , it did not go in for the exam

 

[B+.]

I have received a few questions on the pedigree. The references are here

Prof Brascamp wrote a paper explaining the pedigree and breeding value estimation here http://edepot.wur.nl/326724

The circular breeding cycle is explained here http://www.nev.nl/pages/publicaties/proceedings/nummers/17/87-91.pdf

Sending queens to an island mating station ensures that all virgin queens of a series are mated to the same batch of drones so the entire 1b (sire) side of the pedigree is the same.

 

[Plenty of honey]

There are lots of good resources that explain things like this. Here's a pretty good one (its a little out of date but good enough to revise the subject from) http://waynesword.palomar.edu/lmexer2a.htm

Mmmmmmmmm a difficult read for me. I want to understand this better. the biggest problem we have here is like most seem to mention, it seems, not a guaranteed mating station. We have lots of wild black bees in the vicinity. This was my first year breeding, well if you call it that. I am now in awe of the work people are doing to maintain great stock.
We are adding drone comb to selected stock in an area that is surrounded by "good hives." but its still pot luck as some queens are still very undesirable after mating, but, we do get our primary selection criteria, thats bees that you can actually work with ones you dont have to wear a "haz mat suit" when inspecting them. I am am trawling through previous posts to find out as much as i can. Gosh theres a lot of work to do! Also reading Snelgroves queen rearing. Gulp!!!!

 

[B+.]

I want to understand this better. the biggest problem we have here is like most seem to mention, it seems, not a guaranteed mating station. We have lots of wild black bees in the vicinity.

Unless you have complete control of both sides of the pedigree, you're not going to make any progress. They will always slip back to the mean for your area.

 

[masterBK]

By selecting the queens to breed from (which will produce drones the following year and drone flooding the area) and at the same time culling and replacing queens whose colonies are not up to what you want the "mean" for the area will and does change with time. It also helps if you donate queens to neighbouring beekeepers and persuade them to select for similar things.

 

[B+.]

By selecting the queens to breed from (which will produce drones the following year and drone flooding the area) and at the same time culling and replacing queens whose colonies are not up to what you want the "mean" for the area will and does change with time. It also helps if you donate queens to neighbouring beekeepers and persuade them to select for similar things.

This sort of Tom, Dick and Harry mating is certainly not breeding. It might improve the character of some of the bees in the vacinity but these would not be part of his breeding population. Whats more, he would not be testing the performance of all these other colonies so he can't have a population mean. At best, he could have a sample mean and hope the sample is representative of the population.
It would take a long time for the drones from selected colonies to have much impact on the area too. Much better to raise lots of daughters from a selected colony and use these as drone colonies.

 

[Plenty of honey]

By selecting the queens to breed from (which will produce drones the following year and drone flooding the area) and at the same time culling and replacing queens whose colonies are not up to what you want the "mean" for the area will and does change with time. It also helps if you donate queens to neighbouring beekeepers and persuade them to select for similar things.

Interesting. We have another beekeeper in drone congregation area distance that has native bees as his mean stock ( and yes there is a pun in the word mean)
SO like you say they will always revert to the mean of the area. Unless we get him onboard were always fighting!! combine the other factor of wild or feral colonies in the mix and its no help! However i would like to think that if we did raise lots of daughters of the good selected stock, surrounding the mating yard by apiaries of good stock, the results surely must be more positive B+?

 

[B+.]

the results surely must be more positive B+?

If you open mate your queens in the same area, his drones will mate with your virgin queens and your drones will mate with his virgin queens. Eventually, you'll both have the same nasty mongrels. The only way to prevent this is to take control of both sides of the pedigree as I said earlier.
You can do this using isolated mating stations or instrumental insemination

 

[B+.]

We have another beekeeper in drone congregation area distance that has native bees as his mean stock ( and yes there is a pun in the word mean)

Sticking with the statistical sense of the word...
To calculate the mean, you have to score every individual colony and divide by the number of colonies. Clearly, you aren't going to do that so you can't have a population mean....which is why I said you'd have a sample mean. But a sample of what? They'd all be mongrels. This is not a breeding population. All you could say is that it is a sample of mongrels that happen to reside in your area. Its an unstable group and the figure means nothing.