Drone breeding...?

bjosephd · Jul 7, 2015

This is a bit of ramble but....

So there's always lots of talk of queen breeding/rearing.

I also understand the value of local 'mongrel' bees - albeit with an element of selection by us to select the traits from these locally bred 'mongrels' that are desirable.

We breed on from our best queens and dispatch of the queens who's qualities we don't like - we also, of course, breed on from 'survivor' bees and not from those who don't (obviously)

(although I question the idea of replacing queens with young queens every year, therefore never selecting for a bee that can live longer than a year - not a good way to force evolution's hand maybe? That's another discussion maybe).

However, as responsible beekeepers, and since each virgin queen flies out and does her best to mate with as many good drones (10-20 or so) as possible, then shouldn't we also be maximising our drone laying from the queens with the most desirable traits.

It appears there is a modicum of dislike amongst many about having 'too many' drones in the hive since they are 'unproductive' etc.

However, surely the drones are our best bet when it comes to spreading the pure genetic line of the queens we like, untainted by the fertilisation of one of those random 20 drones our queen mated with.

So shouldn't each beekeeping association or wotnot really urge and promote maximising drone laying from our most desirable colonies in order that a local area's queens are far more likely to mate with a 'ood/desirable' genetic line?

Surely if I want to do all my colonies a favour in the long term, I would want to spread the genes of the mightiest queens around the whole local bee region, and the only way I can do this is sending out as many drone 'ambassadors' as possible.

By selecting just queens we can effect mostly just our own colonies, but by maximising our quality drone laying from those queens we can surely create a more substantial genetic momentum and potential for our local 'mongrels'.

I don't actually know... and am no breeder in any way shape or form... it's just a hunch, and at least hopefully an interesting discussion.

(I'm also waiting for a virgin queen to get out on the town and get mated with hopefully 20 of the most marvellous drones!)

Hope one and all... bees and your familiees, are all happy and healthee!

BJD

Tom Bick · Jul 7, 2015

Yes its very important in getting well mated queens we have a healthy population of drones in the hives and surrounding areas.

mjt68 · Jul 7, 2015

bjosephd said:
This is a bit of ramble but....

So there's always lots of talk of queen breeding/rearing.

I also understand the value of local 'mongrel' bees - albeit with an element of selection by us to select the traits from these locally bred 'mongrels' that are desirable.

We breed on from our best queens and dispatch of the queens who's qualities we don't like - we also, of course, breed on from 'survivor' bees and not from those who don't (obviously)

(although I question the idea of replacing queens with young queens every year, therefore never selecting for a bee that can live longer than a year - not a good way to force evolution's hand maybe? That's another discussion maybe).

However, as responsible beekeepers, and since each virgin queen flies out and does her best to mate with as many good drones (10-20 or so) as possible, then shouldn't we also be maximising our drone laying from the queens with the most desirable traits.

It appears there is a modicum of dislike amongst many about having 'too many' drones in the hive since they are 'unproductive' etc.

However, surely the drones are our best bet when it comes to spreading the pure genetic line of the queens we like, untainted by the fertilisation of one of those random 20 drones our queen mated with.

So shouldn't each beekeeping association or wotnot really urge and promote maximising drone laying from our most desirable colonies in order that a local area's queens are far more likely to mate with a 'ood/desirable' genetic line?

Surely if I want to do all my colonies a favour in the long term, I would want to spread the genes of the mightiest queens around the whole local bee region, and the only way I can do this is sending out as many drone 'ambassadors' as possible.

By selecting just queens we can effect mostly just our own colonies, but by maximising our quality drone laying from those queens we can surely create a more substantial genetic momentum and potential for our local 'mongrels'.

I don't actually know... and am no breeder in any way shape or form... it's just a hunch, and at least hopefully an interesting discussion.

(I'm also waiting for a virgin queen to get out on the town and get mated with hopefully 20 of the most marvellous drones!)

Hope one and all... bees and your familiees, are all happy and healthee!

BJD

Yes, part of breeding and selecting bees is ensuring that there are good quality (and not closely related) drones available for mating. Drone foundation is sold for this purpose, although some now use this to raise drones purely to kill Varroa. The diary of a beekeeper in Beekeepers' Quarterly (I think) mentions putting frames of drone foundation into selected colonies early in the season as one of the first tasks in the year for queen breeders.

B+. · Jul 7, 2015

bjosephd said:
I also understand the value of local 'mongrel' bees - albeit with an element of selection by us to select the traits from these locally bred 'mongrels' that are desirable.

I'm not sure how you intend to fix the traits you're looking for.

What "value" is it that you think exists in your local "mongrels"?The term "mongrel" implies that there has been no attempt to control the breeding process. For a stock to have any breeding value at all, it must have been subject to some testing and selection. Even then, without large numbers of sister queens you are unable to establish heritable characteristics from family groups.

mjt68 · Jul 7, 2015

Cross the best with the best and hope for the best?

B+. · Jul 7, 2015

mjt68 said:
Cross the best with the best and hope for the best?

Bee breeding is a bit more rational than that http://coloss.org/beebook/I/queen-rearing/4

mjt68 · Jul 7, 2015

B+. said:
Bee breeding is a bit more rational than that http://coloss.org/beebook/I/queen-rearing/4

Oh yes modern genetics is a wonderful thing - something as simple as the breeders' equation is a powerful tool. But for the first several thousand years man domesticated and improved plants and livestock by crossing the best with the best. It would be interesting to impose a selection regime onto mongrels and see what happens and how much progress could be made. You'd need a LOT of colonies to separate identify good lines with heritable and penetrant traits and to really flood the drone pool to ensure you kept control. I don't think you'd get anywhere close to the quality you can buy but if it's a hobby and you want to see evolution in action and to improve your bees why not?

B+. · Jul 7, 2015

mjt68 said:
but if it's a hobby and you want to see evolution in action and to improve your bees why not?

At least, with animals, you could eat the ones you didn't want to breed from

For want of a better word · Jul 7, 2015

The mainstay of our queen rearing efforts in both the NZ Italians and the Cornish Native black bees, is to drone flood the mating apiaries, colonies all have at least one frame of drone brood, the best can have up to eight if on double brood.
Needless to say the two types of bee are far enough away from each other not to intergress!!!

Yeghes da

BeeJayBee · Jul 8, 2015

mjt68 said:
But for the first several thousand years man domesticated and improved plants and livestock by crossing the best with the best.

And slightly of topic!

Man 'improved' plants and livestock by crossing and selecting for traits that man thought was the best for them, at first they might simply have chosen to breed from the most docile cattle or save seed from the most productive grasses. If you look, for example, at some dog breeds, this selection hasn't always been a good thing for the animals especially in recent times.

Track back to skep beekeeping and it was the swarmiest bees that were kept, because the beekeepers caught the swarms to use later.

Some beekeepers cull drones because they believe it will help fight varroa, but letting a colony produce whole frames of drones so the beekeeper can destroy them before maturity is expensive for the colony. The downside of drone-rearing could be high mite loads, and the need to use miticides. I have no idea if any of them affect drone fertility.

Nakedapiarist · Jul 8, 2015

There's also the issue for many of us with only a few hives that the colony you most want to breed from is the colony you're selecting for queen production - letting that colony produce large numbers of drones is not necessarily a good thing as presumably we want to limit sibling matings.

Hivemaker. · Jul 8, 2015

Nakedapiarist said:
There's also the issue for many of us with only a few hives that the colony you most want to breed from is the colony you're selecting for queen production - letting that colony produce large numbers of drones is not necessarily a good thing as presumably we want to limit sibling matings.

Or grandparent drones.

mbc · Jul 8, 2015

Nakedapiarist said:
There's also the issue for many of us with only a few hives that the colony you most want to breed from is the colony you're selecting for queen production - letting that colony produce large numbers of drones is not necessarily a good thing as presumably we want to limit sibling matings.

Drones from one location can cover an area of 30 square miles and the average mating occurs nearly a mile away from the apiary, I wouldn't fret too much about sibling matings.
I work towards drone saturation/semi isolated mating and I have loads of colonies in many apiaries and yet I don't kid myself that my virgins always, or even mostly, mate with my drones. It is an uphill struggle as the bees own biology does a fine job of avoiding inbreeding.

bjosephd · Jul 8, 2015

Nakedapiarist said:
There's also the issue for many of us with only a few hives that the colony you most want to breed from is the colony you're selecting for queen production - letting that colony produce large numbers of drones is not necessarily a good thing as presumably we want to limit sibling matings.

Which is understandable.

However, surely any pedigree, bee in Buckfast Bee or Bernese Mountain Dog needs a limited gene pool in order to 'create' or be able to continue to call it said pedigree. A pedigree by it's very nature at some point becomes a limited gene pool?

Are all bees by the name of Buckfast direct descendants of Brother Adam's bees? Surely they have to be, and so surely that means a limited gene pool - particularly if the assumption is that the breed is 'finished'? (although surely it had to finish when Brother Adam died).

Or are all Buckfasts these days actually just Buckfast like, with similar selected qualities?

Either way... the more I think about it all, the more my brain turns somewhat inside out!

Hivemaker... how on earth do you create 'pure' but not inbred Buckfasts?

For want of a better word · Jul 8, 2015

Bj.... as far as I can ascertain the name Buckfast Bee is a generic term for a hybrid between a Carniolian and a Ligurian bee.

The bee breeding experimentation at Buckfast Abbey in Devon ceased in the last century, however a few breeders have continued, whether or not the bees produced could trace a lineage back to BA would only be possible by looking at mitrochondrial DNA. The cost would be prohibitive and the task IMOLHO pointless!

I recall that the name Buckfast has various derivatives and is the owners property

Yeghes da

B+. · Jul 8, 2015

icanhopit said:
hybrid between a Carniolian and a Ligurian bee.

There is a Buckfast breeders website at http://perso.fundp.ac.be/~jvandyck/homage/elver/
It isn't the easiest pedigree in the world to follow but you can see all sorts of crosses with anatolica, monticola, etc. It is this continuous out-breeding that gives the Buckfast bee such a large population.
It isn't possible to think of the Buckfast as a homogeneous group when it depends on the continuous introduction of new genetic material from other races.

bjosephd · Jul 8, 2015

Brain melt.

If only bees looked as different from each other as a Bernese Mountain Dog and a Working Cocker Spaniel!

Although that would get tricky since you would need significantly different hive proportions if the size variation of breeds was the same as within dogs!

Maybe I'll avoid queen rearing for now but rather allow significant drone production in my loveliest or most productive, hardiest etc, of colonies. That at least might help some of the local hobby queen breeders and give them all a good mating chance.

And cull the drones from nasty hives.

BJD

bjosephd · Jul 8, 2015

B+. said:
There is a Buckfast breeders website at http://perso.fundp.ac.be/~jvandyck/homage/elver/

Aha... on the front page it's telling...

"European breeders using Brother Adam’s rearing principles"

So the Buckfast is less of a blood line and more of a bee bred with particular principles.

Buckfast sounds like it's almost become an open source brand or trade mark.

Are there any other branded bees?

...and how many years selective breeding do I need to do to before I can start selling 'Somerset Cider Bees'?

B+. · Jul 8, 2015

bjosephd said:
...and how many years selective breeding do I need to do to before I can start selling 'Somerset Cider Bees'?

I don't know but if it comes with a gallon of cider, put me down for a dozen

bjosephd · Jul 8, 2015

B+. said:
I don't know but if it comes with a gallon of cider, put me down for a dozen

Hmm... I think I might be on to something here.

1 gallon of Roger Wilkins' Cider with every Somerset Cider Bee.

(EDIT: I've decided to rename said bee to The 'Bempstone' Bee (maybe)... sounds posherer and more historicaler)

(and a far smaller area)

Drone breeding...?

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