Bee Breedin

[beenatural101]

Bee fruitful and multiply... The honeybee is rather prolific and can adapt to a variety of conditions from near arctic conditions to the tropical rain forests, to arid semi desert in the American southwest, and nearly anything in between. the honey bee is so adaptable due to its very high genetic recombination rate during sexual reproduction.
Mix em up real good and you get more chances of survival and increased adaptability, especially for a generalist such as the honeybee, able to forage from a very large foliage base. Different locales will have different flora, this is a given. A creature that can take advantage of a great number of food sources in many different environments has good chances of survival. Estimates for the honeybee range from 15 million years or more. A lot of different things have come and gone in that period.
Natural is what is all about for me, because the bees know best of course.
Queen bees are naturally inclined to mate with up to 20 different drones, thereby being mated for life, storing the sperm in her body to be released a few at a time with an egg, or not. The unfertilized eggs make more drones. She also seeks to mate with the highest number of unrelated drones she can, and the strongest of those.
knowing the queens desires can help us to fulfill that wish.
She wants drones, big, stud muffin single minded boys with big ol eyes for spottin her and big ol muscles for flyin fast to catch her. We can encourage the bees to make drones. Using regular foundation gives you maybe 1 or 2 percent drones, unless you use drone comb. I cut out a section between the wires near the end of the frame when the wax is 1 year old. then I know old drone comb goes, and I wont have to worry about it once I go foundationless.
I am trying to come up with local queens for local beekeepers here in this drought, so i am getting as much diversified stock as i can to use for drone stock and scatter throughout the area. all the hives will have 10 percent drones in them lots for breeding. any queens flying anywhere in the area are bound to come upon many unrelated drones in their local congregation area. I need 10 to 20 unrelated lines we have 3 good strains and are about to go to 4. That is what we know about, those of us involved, there are other bees in the area I am sure, drones from packages etc... we will get some of those genetics too, but ours will be by far the majority, and after a few years of replenishing our bought queens every other year we should have a nice genetic base locally. then we will only have to bring in mother queen stock if we want. If we give em the opportunity they will be bees and make more. Just gotta make sure we get the good ones in here.

[beenatural101]

There are a couple facts about honeybee genetics most people do not know. the Drone, or male bee, actually comes from an unfertilized egg.
A drone carries only one x chromosome and only one of a particular gene on that chromosome. X. A worker or queen (females) must have 2 copies of the gene to be female two X chromosomes, fertilized eggs. The queen can control whether or not an egg is fertilized as it is laid.
Think about breeding bees for instance. I will offer my experiment as an example.
I purchased a bred ready to lay queen from the southwestern survivor project with a mind to use her as a base for mother stock, pending evaluation (shes doin great!). Now I have a daughter of hers freshly mated, I even saw the girl land and get ushered in the hive by the workers. Now she has purely New mexico Renia genetics. her offspring will be a cross of whatever she bred with. I have to use her and any of her sisters I get to start my base stock. Hope to have 50 to 100 hives in the local pool ( in a rough 10 mile circle or so) between me an the other locals. Think I can get us a bee well suited to these droughts. We will see! The keys being for the last 2 years I have been drone flooding with good stock. Those genes are apt to be out there. 2 I keep getting unrelated bees. this renia from zia is a key in my genetic diversity scheme, and already well suited to diverse dry conditions. and pretty nice. We all keep getting other survivor stock bees in the area for a few years and things will really be looking up in the central breeding yard. Drone congregation areas flooded with stock from 20 different bee stocks in the 10 mi radius will ensure a good genetic diversity for the daughter queens and the strong will survive from that. I am currently working hard on this project and hope to be able to breed 10 or more in the spring off my new daughter . I am sure she is bred well. I have lots of drones, so do other beekeepers in the area with good bees. its a good start.
Just gotta watch em some could be touchy lol!

[beeginner]

Another very interesting reading. Thanks for the information. And I always wondered about the drones - why so many. Also concerned that there might be too many of them and the poor workers have to look after them. From your explanation I see why it would be important to have many of them and from different stock.
I am planning to take two ready and full hives (including honey) from a local beekeeper, then a bit later couple of nukes from a beekeeper east from us (about 6 hour drive). The local beekeeper has few different breeds. The nukes will not have a queen yet, but queen cells. I hope by the time the queen is ready to take off I will have some drones from the other hives to attend to her.
Our climate is a very wet one, but summers are getting hotter and dryer, but not for long. I guess I will need to make sure there are always flowers in the garden even in the heat. Sunflowers should work and I usually have lots of them. As well, I hear dahlias are good. As well, later in the summer we have a lot of blackberries which bloom in July or so. And we have lots of them as well.
How do I know when the bees are ready to swarm because there is a new queen coming? This is one of the things I am afraid I might miss and not prevent from happening.

[beenatural101]

Some good questions. The presence of queen cells is a sure sign they want to swarm. The books talk about swarm cells and supersedure cells, but in my experience, queen cells come a half dozen or more at a time in a large hive during the spring. Of course to find them (that can be tougher than it sounds) you have to do thorough inspections regularly. Not recommended, smoking a hive causes great disruption. You want your bees to be busy working, not eating. Thats what they do when there is a fire....eat. During honey season, i dont even smoke my bees. Come to think of it, I havent really been in my hives alot this season. I am confident I can tell what is going on in there. They are about to start swarming preparations of their own. I will head them off and split them down, I may split the one into 3 and the other into 2. I will do it after I harvest. It takes acres of flowers to sustain a hive. Most foraging bees stay within 2 miles of home, but they have been known to go 5 or more from home. Anything you plant will just add variety, and a variety of pollen is healthiest for the brood. So plant away, I do. Find some breath of spring.

[rick brumback]

I dont even wanna know how you get bees a breedin.

[beenatural101]

They do best at it if you leave em to it and make sure you got lots of drones.

[rick brumback]

Okay,take your word for it.I know 3 things bout bees,they makes honey,they sting and it hurts.

[papa]

Jul 23, 2011 16:55:21 GMT -6 rick brumback said:

Okay,take your word for it.I know 3 things bout bees,they makes honey,they sting and it hurts.

Yep, that's what I know too.

[beenatural101]

About all I really know is that they know what they are doing. All I can do is make sure they have conditions they like and provide more hives when they need them. And do my best not to harm them.