Breeder Queen Selection

When endeavouring on such as a quest as varroa resistant bee stock there must be a selection of criteria on which to develop a breeding program. Instead of reinventing the wheel, lets take the case of a successful bee breeder who undertook such a task –Brother Adam. Brother Adam has a series of criteria in which to determine which candidates were acceptable for breeding purposes:

Primary

•  Primary qualities are those qualities essential for any maximum honey production.
• Fecundity - maintaining at least 9 frames of brood May - July
• Foraging zeal - a boundless capacity for foraging work, close inbreeding to intensify this quality can be counterproductive.
• Resistance to disease
• Disinclination to swarm

Secondary

• Longevity
• Wing-power
• Keen sense of smell
• Defensive characteristics
•  Hardiness and ability to overwinter
•  Spring development
•  Thrift
•  Instinct of self-provisioning
•  Arrangement of honey stores
•  Wax production and comb building
•  Gathering of pollen
•  Tongue-reach

Tertiary

• Good temper
• Calm behaviour
• Disinclination to propolize
• No brace combs
• Cleanliness
• Honey capping
•  Sense of orientation

His criteria is based on both economical, survival, and a keen sense of observation only acquired by a lifetime spent with bees. Such an in depth criteria is not totally necessary for my purposes but rather lays a frame work. Also, further research has indicated that some of these criteria’s may or may not be as important as once thought. Some are purely for practical purposes.

One benefit of living in such a cold climate is that many of these factors will be taken care of simply by overwintering. Overwintering should be the main criteria, as you cannot breed from dead bees. 

Disease resistance is also a factor as bees are now the host to an array of diseases, parasites, virus, and fungi’s. Hygienic behaviour can take care of a majority of these problems including foulbrood, Chalkbrood, and other brood related illnesses. Mites are the largest problem, and although hygienic and VSH bees will combat them they are not there yet. Some bees also seem to have a tolerance for mite loads which is not totally understood. 

Honey gathering I feel is important economical speaking –it’s the main reason bees are kept. This is based on many facets both inherent in the bee, and manipulated by the beekeeper. The bees fecundity (the rearing of brood) creates more bees and therefore more honey. If those bees are Italian in origin it was also allow them to keep a large cluster through the winter. Foraging zeal is also important but can be caused by several things: breed, Russians are known for not keeping additional stores; demoralization; colony strength; weather conditions; spring buildup, to take advantage of early nectar sources.  Excessive swarming may be breed related, and is a factor for selection. It is also an important beekeeper manipulation. The cause of the swarming must be established before any potential breeder is ruled out.

Many other facets that Brother Adam outlines is simply underscores of these three things. Lets evaluate and eliminate those other factors. This list is quite reminiscent of Michael Palmer’s criteria. 

Gentleness is extremely important –no one wants to fight with their bees.

Propolis has been discovered to be the bee’s immune system. By breeding this out we are essentially making our bees more susceptible to diseases. For this reason I am not only striking this from the list, but actually encouraging it.

Everything else seems to be rather superficial, or simply to hard to really account for.

This leaves us with our criteria:

Overwinter Ability: survives tough winters, maintains a tight cluster, cluster moves to food stores, does not require a unreasonable amount of fall feed.

Disease Resistance: Hygienic/VSH (measure in the 75+ percentile), tracheal mite resistance (as observed with a dissection microscope), nosema resistant (tested with a microscope), shows survival instincts.

Honey Production: Produces good yields, takes nectar gathering flights during lower spring temperatures.

Gentleness: Does not become unreasonably angry during inspections, can wear a veil only except during honey harvest. Gentle on the comb (does not get too nervous). Some bees are known for aggressive F1 crossing (Buckfast) and that will also be accounted for.

Propolis: Produces propolis, seals hive tight for the winter, builds own entrance reducer.

In order to quantify these requirements a metric must be made.

Overwintering: PASS / FAIL

Disease Resistance:

•  Hygienic: Liquid Nitrogen Test
• Mite Count: Sticky board, Sugar Roll
• Microscopy: Trachael mite, Nosema Spores
• General Survivability/Resistance

Honey Production:

•  Amount of honey produced relative to other similar sized colonies
• Amount of feed consumed relative to honey produced

Gentleness: PASS / FAIL

Propolis: PASS / FAIL

Because this breeding program will be conducted in a modified treatment free regime, the pressures on the bees will be enormous. However to mitigate mite drift, and the spread of diseases susceptible colonies will be treated with Oxalic Acid and be moved to a non-treatment free apiary (see previous posts). Those combs will be decontaminated over a cycle (wax/honey removed and sold to treatment beekeepers) and reinstituted. Bees will be used for populating dead outs, nucs, mating nucs. Queens will be disposed of, unless they prove other desirable qualities or were under performing due to extreme circumstances or keeper error. For economic purposes the "live and let die" method does not seem advantageous, nor reasonable for a growing apiary. Those bees which are not performing but do not appear to need treatment will be allowed to live through a winter and/or requeened.

Queens will be procured from many sources deemed acceptable, both locally and internationally. Ontario has many good breeders of stock including hygienic, Buckfast, Russian, etc. Locally acclimated bees are known for their abilities. Some stock is to be gotten from US sources such as Minnesota VSH hygienics, as well as any promising queens. 

The first order of business will be injecting hygienic genetics, and from those colonies demonstrating good survival (cant breed from dead bees). It will take years to develop these bees.

Deadout Autopsy #1

So pulled one hive apart to inspect the dead out and figure out what went wrong. First box, full of honey probably 60+lbs plus a ton of granulated sugar on top of that –very few bees with their heads in cells. This pretty much rules out a starvation theory, and now I have to delve deeper. 

Clearly a great deal of stores left

Upon closer examination and looking through dead bees we can find the culprit. Mites! The mites will slowly kill off the bees reducing the size of the cluster and give them a host of viral problems. As the cluster gets smaller it makes it very difficult for the bees to maintain heat. Only small clusters will die out from cold/starvation because they simply cannot rear brood or move to honey stores.

You can imagine, if the few dead bees clinging to the combs had two visible signs of mites, what the dead ones on the bottom boards must of had.

Result: Varroa killed the bees!

It is a sad reality of not treating bees!

Overwintering Experiment – Winter 2013

Searching on the internet there is a multitude of overwintering beehives. Most of it is completely inappropriate to harsh Canadian winters. As a new beekeeper I was rather confused and worried about overwintering options –I didn’t want to lose more bees then I ought to. In addition to these difficulties this autumn wreaked havoc; the goldenrod bloom never came for their winter stores, and due to the unusually warm autumn any honey left on for winter stores was quickly used up. By the time this was realized, it was becoming too cold for syrup so emergency dry sugar feeding was the only option.

The Biology andManagement of Colonies in Winter, by Adony Melathopoulos contains a great deal of information regarding the overwintering of bees in very cold climate (Beaverlodge – Alberta, coincidently where my bees genetics began with work by TI Szabo). 

Michael Palmer has some great advice on wintering colonies on his presentation Keeping Bees inFrozen North America.

 

But, all this information was “after the fact” for me so I setup a short experiment. All the hives save one very small colony (late swarm catch) and one large colony (best producer) were roughly similar sized clusters. All had very little honey left and are surviving off emergency granulated sugar feeding.

Screen Bottom Board vs. Solid Bottom Board

It is very easy to imagine to ourselves that bees get cold. It is another example of how we as humans assume that because we are cold, that the bees are as well. This is a completely false notion. Bees are affected by temperature in the sense that they must keep their cluster at a constant 32-36 degrees Celsius. This in turn affects their metabolic rate, and how much they need to consume in calories to produce that heat. At 5 degrees Celsius bees use the least amount of honey, steadily increasing the cold it gets. Likewise, any warmer will trigger brood rearing which will also use up a great amount of honey.  

I placed three colonies on screen bottom boards, and the rest on solid to see if the open SBB would have a negative effect on those hives. In late December I had checked on them. The SBB did not seem to contribute any negative aspects on any of the three hives. Conversely, the ones with SBB looked to be drier. The solid bottom boards however had remnants of newspaper, sugar, and dead bees that had grown mouldy, whereas the same detritus found on the SBB hives was not mouldy. This indicates that although slanted forward to minimize moisture in the hive it was still an issue.

They are currently still on SBB, and Solid Bottom boards as they were, I do not feel that it affects the hives one way or the other.

Wrapped vs Unwrapped

Wrapping with tar paper (roofing felt), worth the effort? Not initially part of my experiment, but after running out of light while wrapping I had to call it quits, and consequently left some hives unwrapped. I went with it to observe possible differences. Tar paper gives a moderate amount of protection to the hive, prevents some drafts, but is primarily for solar gain.

When I went to check the hives in late December, we had above zero temperatures. I opened the entrance reducers to clean out debris, and dead bees from the bottom boards. I was surprised to see that hives with tar paper (with or without solid bottom boards) were able to take a cleansing flight. Those without tar paper did not. It goes without saying that cleansing flights are very important for the health of the colony, those without tar paper were later wrapped in hopes that they would get a cleansing flight the next warm day –which they did.

On Entrance Reducers

I am not bold enough as of yet to completely remove entrance reducers from overwintering colonies. Michael Palmer uses 1/4inch hardware cloth (wire mesh), to protect from mice entering the hives, but is otherwise wide open. What I can tell you is use the largest opening. Ventilation is the most important aspect of overwinter, and condensation equals dead outs. There is noticeably more moisture in hives using the smallest entrance reducer opening. In addition turn the entrance reducer upside down, and face the entrance up. This was a tip given to me by a friend. It prevents the entrance from getting clogged up from dead bees, which in turn prevents them from taking a cleansing flight.

It is currently January 13, 2014. All hives are currently still alive. This page will be updated as the experiment of SBB vs Solid continues, and if any long term effects are observed. All hives save one, are clustered at the top super eating granulated sugar. Fingers crossed.

Queen Rearing in the Sustainable Apiary

The other element of the equation is making the queens that go into those nucleus colonies. This was probably the hardest of the presentations to follow, it is so packed with information and numbers it could make your head spin. To say it was hard to follow is not fair, Palmer did an amazing job and would make an even better teacher, the hardest part was with me. I constantly had to rewind to write down those numbers and try to get it exactly right. In fact half the reason I am writing this is so I won’t have to think about it again!

The reasons for rearing your own queens is plenty: you can breed for qualities you are looking for in your bees; they are acclimatized to your locale; you aren’t buying queens; etc. Everyone should be making their own queens. Without going into the qualities you look for in bees, and sticking to the Michael Palmer method, let’s get to it!

Bees will naturally raise queens under three circumstances:

Emergency - OK               

Bees are suddenly queenless and will take larvae in a worker cell, turn that cell into a queen cell and feed it royal jelly. The larvae are of various age, they will not be of top quality. 

Supercedure - BETTER

The bees feel as though their queen is failing, builder queen cells, and prompt the queen to lay in them. These queens are raised by the bees with the initial intention of creating a new queen, feeding as much royal jelly as is required. It will produce a quality queen, but not many of them. This can be prompted by injuring the queen. 

Swarming - BEST

When the bees decide to swarm, they create many queen cells that the queen lays in. They are fed as much royal jelly as they need. This usually takes place in the spring during a nectar flow, so they receive the best nutrition, and have the most nurse bees to look after the developing queens.

Relying on natural methods however, are neither reliable, nor practical for the beekeeper wishing to produce a number of queens. However, any good beekeeper must imitate the bees in order to produce the best results.

Nowadays, most queen cells are produced using the Queenless Cell Starter / Queenright Cell Finisher method. There is a great deal of literature and videos available explaining this method, however I will not delve into it. Michael Palmer believes this method is not sustainable because you must tap into the resources of your honey production colonies to do so.

BROTHER ADAMS CELL BUILDING METHOD

Palmer and Webster utilize many of Brother Adams principals; however they did not realize it at the time. The method that Michael Palmer uses is simply a deviation of Brother Adams method. It capitalizes on both the emergency queen building response, as well as the swarm cell building response; this should create the best possible cells.

Firstly a strong colony is needed, containing 9-12 frames of brood. A queen excluder is then put on the hive as well as another hive body contained sealed brood harvested from elsewhere. When the sealed brood hatches the colony’s nurse bee population will be at a maximum. The hive is now crowded creating swarming conditions, pollen/nectar are coming in –the best possible time for harvesting.

MICHAEL PALMERS CELL BUILDING METHOD

Breeder Queen Selection

Use the best of what you have available. The breeder queen is kept in a box containing vertical queen excluders. Frames can be added in to accurately control the age of the larvae. Ideally you’re larvae should be around 12 hours old. His criteria selected is quite simple: wintering, does the hive winter well, and keep a tight cluster; disease, are they prone to disease and if so how are the dealing with it?; temper, goes without saying; honey production, are they good producers?; lastly, how much sugar do they consume during the winter with a noticeable comparison to how much honey they produced (i.e. A colony that produced 100lbs, but had to be fed 20lbs of syrup could be seen inferior to a hive that produced 70lb of honey but only needed fed 10lbs).

Day 1

•          Harvest frames of sealed brood from over wintered nucleus colonies, place on strong colony over a queen excluder.
•          The hive is setup thus: The area below the queen excluder contains 2 deeps, and 1 medium as the brood nest, as well as a medium of honey on top of that. On top of the queen excluder is another medium box of honey, and the box of sealed brood above that.
•          The overwintered nucleus colonies are 4 frames stacked 3 high; giving a total of 12 frames per nucleus colony. He can harvest 1-2 frames from each for populating cell builders with nurse bees. This also prevents the nucleus colonies from swarming by creating additional room for the queen to lay in.

Day 10

•          Check the cell builder for any queen cells, all must be destroyed. Above the excluder could contain emergency cells, and below the excluder could contain swarm cells.
•          The nurse bees have hatched out.

Day 11 – Morning (Cell Builder Prep)

•          Remove queenless section (above excluder) from the queenright section (below excluder). Turn the queenright selection 180 degrees and move back, providing it with its over top cover, bottom board, etc. The queenless section is then placed in the original spot that the hive was located. Put the honey super of the queenless section on the bottom (it was there anyway), to insulate as well as simulate honey flow conditions.
•          Check the hive to ensure there are no queen cells, or open brood in which the hive could create them.
•          Using a shaker box (a deep with a queen excluder nailed to the bottom of it), to shake additional nurse bees into the queenless hive. Any queens will be caught by the excluder and can be put back in their original hive.
•          A frame of pollen is put into the space next to where the grafts will go. Palmer traps his own pollen, freezes it, and gently presses it into a frame of empty drawn comb.
•          Feed 1:1 sugar syrup

Day 11 – Afternoon (Grafts)

·          

•      The queenless section is now hopelessly queenless and will accept your grafts.
•          Add grafts placing them directly beside your comb of pollen

Day 16 (Cells are sealed)

·          

•       Remove the top feeder
•          Set the cell builder in its original configuration, in the original location, with the queen excluder.

Day 21 (Cells are done)

·          

•       Keep cells warm, and put one each in a mating nucleus.
•           Check the cell building colony for any queen cells, and to make sure there is still a laying queen.

…Rinse and repeat

The benefits of this system are many. Firstly, you are starting your cells in an emergency condition, and then finishing them in a swarming condition. Secondly, you are maximizing the amount of nurse bees, which maximizes the amount of royal jelly being fed to the developing queens –better quality queen. You are not robbing resources from your production colonies, you are harvesting brood from nucleus colonies that would otherwise swarm from overcrowding. This system can be used repeatedly whereas traditional systems would work once and then the hives resources to make good queens would be depleted. Using this method Palmer can produce (from 35 cell builders): 1500 Queens, and 2 tons of honey.

Day 36 – 41

• Queens can be checked for laying, marked and caught.
• Add new queen cell
• On the last (third round) of queen rearing, catch only half the queens, remove dividers to turn queen castle (2 frame by 4 mating nucs) into Palmer's conventional nucleus colony (4 frame by 2 nucs) for overwintering.
• If the queen is allowed to lay longer than the 16 days, the mating nuc can become overpopulated. This can create swarming conditions as well as make it harder to find/catch the queen.

Palmer uses a rotational system where he is producing queens every four days. He gets three rounds out of each group every season. I created a spreadsheet to illustrate this, as it was hard to visualize myself.

The Sustainable Apiary by Mike Palmer

Recently Mr. Palmer was invited to do a series of talks at the National Honey Show in England. Graciously for us these presentations were filmed and made available to everyone. Previously, there was an earlier video for the sustainable apiary which is also worth the watch. Here and there you might find a small clip of Michael Palmer discussing a technique, or giving a short explanation about how he does something. It is not long till you figure out “this man knows what he is talking about”

I had a great deal of questions about his system that I scoured Internet forums for answers to, even asking Palmer himself –which he was more than happy to answer. His operation is big, it’s involved, and during the season it is running. This can make it a little difficult for the novice beekeeper to catch on to. I had watched all these videos a multitude of times, and it was not until I sat down with a notebook, constantly rewinding I started to be able to piece it all together.

To understand how this works, you must understand the ‘why’. Today beekeepers experience winter losses, that in the spring they replace by making splits, and ordering packages/queens. The demands of pollination has significantly increased the price of these packages, as well as lowered the quality. Consequently this means that if you are buying these packages to replace your stock you are probably just scraping by financially.

Now what if we could make our own nucleus colonies, our own queens, which are adapted to your climate, and of better quality to replace our stocks or use for increases for FREE (ok not free, but close). All of a sudden you aren’t buying early packages and queens from stocks that are not adapted to your climate, that are more likely to overwinter. Get off the package treadmill! Bees’ dying does not make for fun beekeeping, its heart breaking, and its costly –no one wins!

Here comes Michael Palmer, showing us the way. He’s the first to admit this is not his idea. Kirk Webster introduced him to the idea of overwintering nucs. Once he started digging a little deeper, low and behold Brother Adam, and a host of old-timers were doing it as well. This is not a new idea!

This can appeal to me! In Ontario, we can’t order packages. The only way to replace your bees is to split them, or buy nucleus colonies. With all the bees dying in Ontario this has driven the prices of nucleus colonies up to almost $200. In northern Vermont (where Michael Palmers apiary is,) they experience the same harsh winters we do. I can’t afford to replace 50% of my bees each year at $200 bucks a nuc; but I can afford to try and follow in the footstep of someone who just frankly know better (and more).

Sustainability is about having a system that sustains itself, and the parts of that system are interconnected and sustain other parts in that system. Recognizing this Palmer has broken this down into three parts:

NUCLEUS COLONIES – PRODUCTION COLONIES – QUEEN REARING COLONIES

The nucleus colonies can become your production colonies, they can boost your production colonies, they can make new nucleus colonies, they are “…nothing more than a queen with support staff,” for requeening. The production colonies are there to make honey, isn’t beekeeping all about making honey? Queen Rearing colonies supply the queens to your nucleus colonies, or can be sold.

OVERWINTERED NUCLEUS COLONIES – the foundation of sustainable beekeeping.

·         What can you do with an overwinter nucleus colony?

•          Replace winter losses
•          Use the queens from those colonies to requeen your weak colonies, or failing queens
•          Increase the amount of colonies you have
•          Sell them for extra income
•          Use the extra frames of brood from those colonies to boost production colonies, or set up cell builders.
•          Use them to make the nucs that you plan to over winter next year

I have never run into an experienced beekeeper that will tell you not to bother having a nuc box laying around. Find a swarm? You have a swarm box. Find a swarm cell? Make a new nuc. Everyone should have a nuc box. Smart people will have more!

There are many nuc boxes on the market made out of any conceivable material. Traditionally there are five frame wooden nuc boxes, they are the norm. Palmer uses one 10 frame deep divided into half, with separate inner covers. When they get bigger he puts a little four frame super on top of that. The benefits of this are that in the winter although divided the bees form one cluster in the middle (clinging to the dividing board). In a forum post when asked “why not five frame nuc boxes,” I remember he replied “think tippy”. Fair enough.

The important part is the concept of the nucleus colony, not the box you put it in.

SPRING

Traditionally in spring, beekeepers will make early splits to counter their winter losses. It’s more than common, I never questioned it. Palmer questioned it. His argument is that those hives are your production colonies by splitting; they never build up to where they could have been. Don’t split, use your overwintered nucs to replaces your losses, or increases.

In his presentations he stresses, do not weaken the prosperous colonies that are doing well. Make your nucleus colonies from non-productive colonies.

•          Identify the weak non-productive colony
•         Put: 2 frames of brood, 1 frame of honey, 1 empty frame in each nuc box
•          Move to new location
•          Add Queen or Queen Cell
•          Check 10 days later

Lets do the math, we lose one weak colony $300 replacement value, and we gain four nucleus colonies $760. If we have to buy four queens those nucs costs us $120, or $48 in queen cells. We could let them raise their own queens, could be risky, and we lose out on one month of production. This is why queen rearing is an important concept in this system. These nucleus colonies can go on to make more nucs as well.

MANAGING NUCLEUS COLONIES

There are a few issues with managing nucleus colonies. They have a reputation for building up fast, which can cause them to swarm or abscond. The important concept here is that you need to give them room to expand you can counter this by:

•          Removing a frame of brood to start a new nucleus colony, or boost a colony (BROOD  FACTORY).
•          In his double nuc system, you could put a queen excluder on, and a honey super above they can fill.
•          Expand to single colony
•          Put in foundation for them to draw out (FOUNDATION FACTORY).

He has several resourceful uses for nucleus colonies. One such concept is the bee bomb. Using the nucleus colonies as a brood factory, he inspects the nuc yard removing 1-2 frames of sealed brood from each nuc until he has a box worth. He then takes this box of sealed brood and places it on a production colony that he feels could use the extra work force. In 1-12 days that colony will be overflowing with nurse bees. When building cell builders he uses a similar concept which will be addressed later.

50 OVERWINTERED NUCS

·          

     May 9 – Jun 19 – Harvests 245 frames of brood, to populated 35 Cell Builders

·        June 16 – July 20 – Harvests enough brood to make 330 Nucleus Colonies to Overwinter

o   Harvests 900 frames of brood in total from 50 overwintered nucs

For overwintering he simply feeds them 1-2 gallons of sugar syrup. See you next spring. You will notice the astonishing amount of productivity he can get from 50 nucleus colonies. Palmer does produce 330 nucs to overwinter, and withholds sale of 50 for use in the sustainable apiary model. Understanding the importance of the nucs is one part of the cyclical equation.