Views on LASI Queens at the end of the season

[Beefriendly]

They're not saying the offspring will be hygienic.

As I understand it (and I don't have a biology degree - I'm just doing the beekeepers' exams), that combination means her sons will inherit the hygienic gene, but her daughters (the workers and future queens) will inherit a set of genes from her, and from the local father - so the hygienic gene is there, and might only become visible in a later generation if that virgin queen mates with a hygienic drone. Am I right to think that?

Anyway, it's £20 for a virgin - I'm happy to pay that.

Spot on.
What it also means is that it is very unlikely that daughters of the virgin will show hygienic behaviour when mated to the local drones in your area, unless they happen to mate with that rare drone with both recessive hygienic alleles.
The only reason I can think they sell them is to get some of those recessive alleles out there into the bee population for future generations. Although I don't think it to be a good strategy, nor money well spent.
However, if these are new hygienic alleles and are dominant you may be on to a winner but its something they don't mention.

LASI's other queens are open mated and they claim good hygienic behaviour,
Their tested open mated ones cost £500...... a lot of money for an open mated queen by anyone's standards.
How all this relates to them removing varroa is anyone's guess.

 

[SDM]

If they are selected breeder queens (which I suspect they are for that price), they would be at least 1, but probably 2, year old. I would expect them to be instrumentally inseminated too, otherwise, you wouldn't know the workers had any of the traits you paid all that money for.

One of the team did comment after I queried the price on Facebook. Apparently they need to buy a new pickup truck for the queen breeder.
Yes, that honestly was the reason given.

 

[Beefriendly]

Bees with hygienic are just as productive as bees without.

Are they? I've not seen anything that suggests this. I would have though, perhaps naively, that time spent cleaning out cells was wasted foraging time or unloading/packing/wax making etc , although that might be offset by lower varroa loads; assuming hygienic behaviour correlates with VSH. I know the Avignon bees that tolerate varroa gather almost double the amount of honey when treated with miticides. Although their mechanisms of tolerance are not hygienic behaviour.

The advantages of hygienic are control of common bee diseases.

Maybe the bees I use are hygienic and I don't even know it. They don't appear to suffer from any diseases and are literally honey monsters. Good old Br. Adam may have bred the ultimate bee

 

[SDM]

Only if also selected for productivity.

 

[Madge]

Virgins have little value to the workers and are often killed. If you are going to spend your money on a virgin, I suggest that you introduce it to a queenless mating nuc (i.e. Apidea or something similar)

I bought five virgins in the summer, B+, and introduced them to three-frame nucs. They're all alive and doing well, thanks.

 

[B+.]

Maybe the bees I use are hygienic and I don't even know it. They don't appear to suffer from any diseases and are literally honey monsters.

Maybe they are. Test them.

 

[B+.]

I bought five virgins in the summer, B+, and introduced them to three-frame nucs. They're all alive and doing well, thanks.

Great. Are you going to test them?

 

[Finman]

Australia started hygienic bee breeding 2003. When they started, 20% out of Australian hives showed hygienic behaviour

It is interesting to know, where are they now. Breeding stations are in Tasmania.

Second interesting thing you can see in this report... Interesting at least to me. Hygienic is not on-off feature, which inherit or not inherit.

so, what means hygienic feature?

In 2014 report results

50 hives in tests, from 15 Australian lines

- high hygienig 20 hives
- middle range h. 12 hives
- lower hygienic 21 hives

. http://honeybee.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/BeeSci-Hygienic-Behaviour-Report-Tas-1.pdf

.Queen Bee Breeding Program Data – Latest News

Hygienic Behaviour Australian Queen Bee Breeding Program June 2015 Update (PDF)
Hygienic Behaviour in the AQBBP 2014 – Bee Scientifics (PDF)
Hygienic Behaviour Report 2014 – Bee Scientifics (PDF)
Queen evaluation data 2011 – 2012 VIC (PDF)
Queen Annual Report 2011 (PDF)
Gretchen Queen Sale (PDF)
Queen evaluation data 2009 -2010 NSW (PDF)
Queen evaluation data for 2009 -2010 VIC (PDF)
Queen evaluation data 2009 – 2010 TAS (PDF)
Queen evaluation data 2007 – 2008 QLD and NSW (PDF)

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

there are no negatives. Bees with hygienic are just as productive as bees without.

Yet not long ago you stated your bees were excessively swarmy with low productivity - which is why you were introducing fresh Buckfast genes into your apiary to develop non swarmy high yielding 'hygienic' varroa tolerant bees within three years.
You also started in another thread that you cannot expect a good yield from bees that swarm.

Quite a few obvious negatives already.

 

[Finman]

Yet not long ago you stated your bees were excessively swarmy with low productivity - which is why you were introducing fresh Buckfast genes into your apiary to develop non swarmy high yielding 'hygienic' varroa tolerant bees within three years.
You also started in another thread that you cannot expect a good yield from bees that swarm.

Quite a few obvious negatives already.

Non treated mites included.

And I bet that Fusion's bees have serious inbreeding problems. The start has had too few colonies.

20 hives is too small population in developing an own bee strain. And when you select non good away, what you have then?

Colonies should be on good pastures. Then you could se, what they do when they have whole day to work.
If I put a good hives on poor pastures, they get nothing . At same time another hives in another place get 130 kg honey in 3 weeks.

Analysis of "good yield" should be known. Otherwise you do not know what you are doing.

Size of big hive is very important because a small colony fills the hive in a week and then starts swarming preparations.
.


.

 

[Beefriendly]

Maybe they are. Test them.

Not knowing won't keep me awake at night.
Little point really, as they quickly revert to the phenotype of our local mongrel bees over 2, 3 generations. Nasty/unproductive/chalk brood sufferers.....so I won't bother. I'll leave it for everyone else to produce the perfect queens and then buy some.
Lazy perhaps, but it works for me.

 

[Finman]

I'll leave it for everyone else to produce the perfect queens and then buy some.
.

I bought new queens to whole my apiary from 1500 hive owner during 2 last summer. My genepool is renewed now. Biggest reason was mad swarming.

The cost of queens were the honey yield of one hive.

I consentrate my efforts to find 150 kg yield pastures, next year again. It is interesting and give at once results. No need to wait 15 years.

Important was that I bought mated queens. If I had bought 3 queens and reared then own virgins, swarming genes would be still in my apiary, and for ever.

.

May the Force be with me, and not with mites.

.

 

[Beefriendly]

May the Force be with me

And with me...
Amen to that. I'd rather spend my time moving my bees to good forage and collecting honey than trying to breed a VSH bee that may be carp at producing honey. It may be fun for some but it don't tick any boxes for me.

 

[Finman]

And with me...
Amen to that. I'd rather spend my time moving my bees to good forage and collecting honey than trying to breed a VSH bee that may be carp at producing honey. It may be fun for some but it don't tick any boxes for me.

Yes. I trust more on real beebreeders than on my luck.
.
Own reared queens are actually very expencive when I loose one hive's yield, 150 kg. And then sacrifice nuc bees to 40 nucs during main yield.

.

 

[Beefriendly]

Yes. I trust more on real beebreeders than on my luck.
.
Own reared queens are actually very expencive when I loose one hive's yield, 150 kg.

Yup, the good breeders produce better queens that I ever could. Although I buy isolated mated queens and produce one generation of my own queens (F1's) from these . They are just about as good, but the queens performances and rate of swarming go downhill fast if I try breeding from these F1's.

 

[Erichalfbee]

LASI's other queens are open mated and they claim good hygienic behaviour,

I have two and will test them next year

How all this relates to them removing varroa is anyone's guess.

My two colonies headed by these queens have had by far the largest post treatment varroa drop.

LASI claim that you get 18months varroa control with their hygienic queens if you sublimate Oxalic twice in winter having removed all the brood and 1 year in a colony headed by any old queen......At least that's what Prof Ratnieks said in his roadshow

 

[Finman]

If you're talking about LASI's breeding programme - they're not breeding 'mite-resistant' bees (from what I can see on their website); they're breeding for bees with hygienic behaviour. I think there's a difference.

What do the hygienic bees if they do not affect on any disease?.

Just picking dead pupae from combs? never mind.

It is long way, but it is good that it has started. Jobs to do to university.
.

 

[Madge]

Great. Are you going to test them?

No, I doubt it. I'll just do a general assessment of their performance like I do with my other colonies.

 

[Finman]

.
Once I bought varroa resistant queens.

I took 10 assistant bees and put onto them 10 mites. They were in cage over night and all mites were alive next day.
The seller told that they groom theselves clear and bite mites dead.

Then in autumn I gove oxalic acid to the varroa resjstant hives. They dropped as much mites onto floor as other hives.

Such is life.

 

[Fusion_power]

They dropped as much mites onto floor as other hives. Such is life.

Such is not a varroa resistant colony of bees. Or perhaps the queen is from a colony with the variant type DWV, but the colony she was introduced into had the normal virulent form. If the bees are highly resistant to varroa, there will be very few varroa in the colony at any time of year.