I keep notes by recording a video on my phone of the hives, and I verbally describe what I saw and did. How to select a breeder queen? Well, if you don’t keep some kind of notes you will be relying on gut feel, in which case, it all depends on the predictive powers of your digestive tract. The other part of the equation is the skill of the beekeeper from selecting larvae of the right age, to setting up a strong cell builder colony, to correct nutrition and handling of queen cells, through to mating nucs and plenty of drone availability. However, there’s no guarantee that they will be passed on, particularly with open mating of the daughter queens. To make great queens, it certainly helps to start off with a breeder queen who has the traits you wish to pass on. However, now is the time to consider this: Breeding the Best Honey Bees: Selecting a Quality Queen Bee. The best time for good mating weather in my area tends to be from mid-June to the end of July, making the end of May the time when I will start grafting. My experience and research into weather patterns tells me to hold off until later because the weather can be quite unreliable for mating flights in May. This is the image I have of perennial beekeeping, of a shepherd of bees concerned about their well-being and their conservation.Now that we are in that time of crazy colony growth, it won’t be long until some people start to raise their first queens of the season. It is by remaining in a sensible practice of taking brood frame from a hive for the creation of swarms, or even queens that we allow a colony on the one hand not to be weakened by successive takings to the point of making the colony sulky or even so weak that it will not survive the winter and there, too often, I hear about, I quote "how much waste did you have at the end of winter", the terms speak for themselves.Īnd on the other hand, to make available each year beautiful swarms and beautiful queens from the colonies that you know both by their characters and by their docility and the generosity that they offer you without restraint each season. A given number of swarms per hive which will allow me to make available a number of queens for sale. But I refuse to produce as much as we do today in the food industry. I have a given quantity of hives which allows me to be well occupied all season long. My beekeeping farm is on a human scale, I do not operate bees. There won't be enough for everyone, it's like with honey or swarms. Shipment by Chronopost will be done on the day of the caging of the queen and after confirmation of payment in the order of arrival of the reservations. It is only after reviewing my quality criteria that the queen will be removed from the hive and placed with a few companions in a crate with a reserve of candy provided for this purpose for the survival of the queen and her court. The queen is checked to check the regularity of the laying in order to be sure that the brood is tight and uniform. It is a long-term job, but it is the price to pay to guarantee an irreproachable quality for the safeguard of our endemic black bee. The hives with males are selected according to their genetic qualities and their origins. It will be carried out on a mountain apiary specially dedicated to fertilization. But what I do know is that I, the shepherd of bees that I am on a daily basis, I observe this situation to learn even more about this process. I do not know the selection criteria of the bees which make them choose this larva rather than another. It is the bees that build the royal cells to raise their own queens.
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