Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
those interested in pursuing bee breeding further, there are many topics on the subject
(see the 'Further reading' section at the end of this topic).
Improving bees' behaviour
Bee breeders have as their objective the improvement of one or more facets of bee
behaviour: better honey collection, a better ability to overwinter, a tendency not to
swarm, a better temper and so on. Many of these traits may be incompatible with one
another, and so compromises have to be made but, generally, the idea is improvement.
Once the breeding goal has been established, the bee breeder must choose their stock
from the on-site performance of colonies established in apiaries. These colonies are
then tested and given numerical scores for the characteristics being evaluated. This
procedure can take two years or more, and as many colonies as possible should be
evaluated. This latter point is one of the most difficult to overcome for the hobbyist
with only one or two colonies, but it is often equally as difficult for the professional
beekeeper with thousands of colonies simply because of the time constraints.
Once all the colonies have been evaluated, breeder colonies can be chosen. To select the
best colonies to breed from for a particular trait, the scores for certain characteristics are
given more prominence than others. For example, if honey production was considered
twice as important as temper, honey production would be scored on a scale of 0-20,
whereas temper would be scored on a scale of 0-10.
Once the colonies have been evaluated, there are two main methods of breeding queens:
line breeding (closed-population breeding) and hybrid breeding. Both methods have
their merits and either may be employed, depending on which part of the world the bee
breeder lives in.
Line breeding
Line breeding is the commoner of the two main methods, and this can be defined as
breeding and selecting from within a relatively small, closed population. Queens are
reared from the best colonies - i.e. those that produce the most honey, that have the
best temper and so on. These queens are sold as production queens or are used to
re-queen the breeder's test colonies. They are also allowed to mate with the drones in
