Horner method for controlled mating

[fatshark]

The "Horner method" is a means of controlling the flight times of queens and drones to achieve selective mating. It involves allowing the virgin to orientate to her location prior to her mating flight, then delaying the release of virgins and drones until feral drones have largely left drone congregation areas. This was in Australia, but others might substitute 'feral' for any drone with undesirable genetics - Italian, Russian, Buckfast, stroppy, black, yellow, red, blue … take your pick (and no offence meant ;)).

Has anyone tried this? I see that Pete L has posted on this (http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showpost.php?p=224191&postcount=9) on the BKF.

In this article (http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/content/101/3/334.full.pdf) the genetics of drones and offspring were tested and it appears to provide about 85% control over matings i.e. this number were of the desirable type.

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi Fatshark hadn't heard of this before -- very interesting stuff :)

[busybeephilip]

Yes,
I have heard of this, its based on drones from different races flying at different times of the day, very hit and miss. eg Amm drones will fly at lower temps so will fly before Mediterranean races and fly later into the afternoon

[Jon]

That's the theory Phil but I am not sure there is strong evidence for different races flying at different times.
Must dig around for evidence of that.
If you use Apideas this would all be much simpler as you just keep the excluders on until you want to let the virgins out to orientate.

I once left an apidea closed up by mistake for 11 days.
When I opened it the virgin was the first bee out the front and I found eggs in it 2 or 3 days later.

[Rosie]

Rob Jones in Pembrokeshire talks about time isolation and letting virgins and drones out together in the evening. If you come to the BIBBA conference next year you might get chapter and verse from someone who is well practised in the method.

[The Drone Ranger]

I read the article as tricking the queens and drones into flying after the drone congregation areas were clear of other local drones
It doesn't seem to depend on a predisposition to fly in poor conditions or in the dark or such stuff
Just as Fatshark says in the OP

[mbc]

Drones fly on most days of the season and my virgins are free to fly whenever they want but I still sometimes have to wait a month before they get together, I simply cannot see it working very well here.

[fatshark]

Rosie
I'm hoping to be there … even more so if there's a chance to discuss this sort of thing. However, since the timing coincides with schools returning/cheap flights/Apiguard treatment there's a good chance I'll be "encouraged" to be somewhere a little warmer and drier than Llangollen ;)

mbc
Perhaps being 'free to fly' whenever is actually the problem here … if - as Jon suggests - a VQ restricted from flying is desperate to get out and mate this can be exploited. In the same way, it's clear from the paper that drones (from the donor colonies) are also restricted from flying until a) the sentinel hive no longer has flying drones and b) the VQ's are released. In this way things are synchronised.

Of course, it will also be weather dependent … assuming drones normally return at 5ish it would still need a warm, sunny, calm evening. Not impossible.

[Beefever]

But if the drones and queens fly (say) 2 til 5pm and you let yours out at 6pm, haven’t they missed the boat for that day?

On the other hand, maybe because time is short and the urge is strong, apiary vicinity mating is the order of the day!

[mbc]

But if the drones and queens fly (say) 2 til 5pm and you let yours out at 6pm, haven’t they missed the boat for that day?

On the other hand, maybe because time is short and the urge is strong, apiary vicinity mating is the order of the day!

More likely poorly completed matings resulting in inferior queens IMO.

[fatshark]

Sounds to me that Rob Jones might be the person best placed to comment on how well this method works … if, as Rosie says, he's well-practised it might well suggest it is worth pursuing.

[susbees]

Sounds to me that Rob Jones might be the person best placed to comment on how well this method works … if, as Rosie says, he's well-practised it might well suggest it is worth pursuing.

Well that's your holiday sorted then, fatshark :). Pre-reg here (http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bibba-50th-anniversary-conference-sicamm-biennial-conference-2014-tickets-8429168871?aff=es2&rank=1&sid=25b5f3b566a911e3b80812313d2241ae). Be there, or bee less informed :)

[prakel]

Absolutely no idea about this stuff but there is a short paragraph in 'Breeding Queens' by Gilles Fert which is sort of loosely related to the thread subject so I thought I'd mention it:


Over years of controlled mating in South-West France we observed behavioural differences between races. Ligustica drones fly in the late morning while caucasica drones fly in the afternoon. So it is possible to release the virgin queens according to the fertilisation required. But as with all natural mating, this method is only approximate and can never give the same certainty of control as instrumental insemination.

I also seem to remember that Wedmore in his 'Manual' discusses it to some extent but don't have a copy to hand at present.

[fatshark]

Hi Prakel … have you got the Gilles Fert book in English or French? I've been trying to get hold of an English copy for ages (my schoolboy French enables me to stay, er, hydrated but little more). Should anyone have a copy they no longer want please PM me.

A near neighbour selects bees for following and aggression … a novel approach and not one I'd recommend. I'd like my queens to have as little to do with his drones as possible. I suspect, like Giles Fert suggests, I may investigate the offerings from Dr. Schley …

[prakel]

Hi fatshark, mine's in English but I've had it for quite a while now, it's one of those books which are deceptive in the sense that it doesn't 'look' much at first glance but it actually holds a lot of information. Have you tried contacting him direct via his website in case he still has some copies himself?

[fatshark]

Hi prakel … tried that and he has none left. I've also asked Northern Bee books and one or two of the other collectors to look out for a copy. No doubt one will turn up in due course. Although there's nothing fundamentally different about the way most people raise queens it's the little tips and tricks - often mentioned in passing - that are particularly interesting. I've recently re-read Laidlaw and Eckert and found stuff I'd either missed before or forgotten.

[prakel]

Hi prakel … tried that and he has none left...

I'm amazed that such a relatively recent book is so difficult to get hold of. A reprint/update must surely be in order.

[prakel]

The section from Wedmore's 'Manual':


Mating at Abnormal Hours

299. The weather being favourable, both queens and selected drones may be stimulated to fly abnormally early on a sunny day by stimulative feeding at 7am. to 8am., leaving other colonies severely alone or giving them extra shade overnight. Flying may be expected between 9 and 10am (GMT).

300. Alternatively, and with greater certainty, the hives containing the queens and the selected drones may be closed before 10am and put in a cool place, free ventilation being provided through floor ventilators or the like. Feeders are placed in position and stimulative food given about half an hour before the drones from freely exposed colonies are known to cease flying. At the end of the half-hour the closed colonies are exposed on their original stands, which are best put in a position facing towards the sun late in the day, and opened. There will be great activity of the bees and mating generally occurs forthwith. If necessary, a second attempt may be made in a similar manner the next day.

301. Some close entrances with queen excluder only, thus allowing workers free flight and confining only the queens and drone. This is not so effective in securing flight of the queen at the desired time.

302. It is good to provide the hives containing the virgin queens with a supply of two or three dozen selected drones of suitable age (see 177), thus avoiding the necessity of closing the hives in which the drones are bred.

[Little_John]

I find it interesting how these days we tend to think only in terms of Drone Congregation Areas, whereas in several of the 'old' beekeeping books I've read, references are made to 'Apiary Vicinity Mating' - with some beekeepers actually witnessing mating before their very eyes.

Indeed, I remember reading about one guy's successful experiment at captive mating in which he harnessed a virgin to a length of fine silk thread tied to a long pole.

Perhaps hot-footing (or should that be 'hot-winging' ?) it over to a DCA is less attractive to drones released late in the day, and maybe on balance they consider they've better chances of sexual suicide much closer to home ?

[prakel]

No basis for this but sort of prompted by Little_John's post, I wonder whether there might be an improved performance of drones that have been on the wing for a while as a general physiological warm up -flying to a DCA or just 'out and about' prior to AVM?

[Pete L]

I wonder whether there might be an improved performance of drones that have been on the wing for a while as a general physiological warm up -flying to a DCA or just 'out and about' prior to AVM?

I know the drones certainly get a warm up with AVM, the aerial acrobatics of the virgin queens and the drones chasing them is quite spectacular, even flying slap into the ground,trees,bushes, and even people watching...and gone again in a flash, i am sure only the fittest drones get to mate, and at the time this is all going on the drone provider colonies look almost as if they are swarming, but the great activity is the drones.

[prakel]

Nice description Pete, I've never observed this AVM business; only DCA activity (which, if time, assistance and kit allow, I hope to finally get some footage of next summer).

[Rosie]

This might be of interest to those of us trying to achieve isolated AMM matings.

This is the abstract but the whole report is freely accessible.:

"Northern Poland is inhabited by native Apis mellifera mellifera (AMM) and the non-native A. m. carnica (AMC) which was introduced by beekeepers. However, hybrids between the two subspecies of honey bee are relatively rare. The lower than expected proportion of hybrids is hypothesised to be related to reproductive isolation between AMM and AMC. To verify this hypothesis, we allowed the AMM and AMC queens to be naturally inseminated in an area inhabited by both AMM and AMC drones. Genotype of the queens and their sexual partners were derived based on random samples of their worker offspring. Assignment of parental genotypes to the two subspecies was performed with a Bayesian clustering method. In colonies headed by AMM queens, workers were fathered mainly by AMM drones. On the other hand, in colonies headed by AMC queens workers were fathered by drones of both subspecies. The partial reproductive isolation reported here between AMM and AMC may facilitate conservation of the declining population of AMM."

You can find it here:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13592-013-0212-y

It seems too good to be true but if you are one of those who thinks science is infallible you can drop your guard if your only worry is carnica. I will still be aiming at isolated mating sites though. I would be interested to hear comments from a geneticist though as the rest is quite easy to follow and seems quite conclusive that AMM queens don't like or don't encounter carnica drones. On the other hand carnica queens will mate with anything.

[Jon]

That is a very interesting little paper and the authors are well known and well respected researchers.
If true, that is great news for us AMM breeders.

There are a couple of things I don't like about the design of the study though.
It compared the mating of two groups of 24 virgin queens, one Carnica and one Amm group.
The were put in mini plus mating nucs with 2500 bees in each one.
However, all the workers in both groups were Carnica.
I don't know if this could have had an effect on the results but in my opinion workers play a key role in the mating process as I have seen the queen leave and mate with a small mating swarm of attendant workers several times. It would be interesting to repeat the same experiment in the same area using all AMM workers in the mating nucs to rule out any possibility of an effect from the workers.

The other thing I was a bit wary about was the assumption about the genetics of local colonies based on a sample of just one bee per colony yet we know colonies are made up of sets of half sisters with different drone fathers.
I suppose this was likely to even itself out if by chance a worker was sampled which happened to be unrepresentative of the colony as a whole.

[Little_John]

That is a very interesting little paper ...

Agreed - but the study is deficient by no mention being made of the weather conditions which prevailed on those days during which mating flights took place - for it is well known that AMM mating frequently takes place under poor weather conditions which carnica (and ligustica) find non-conducive to mating.

Thus, should there have been several inclement days at the beginning of the experiment's mating flight period (an assumption, of course) - then those days would have produced only AMM-AMM matings - whereas on the later 'good weather' days the remaining carnica queens would have been able to mate with drones from both sub-species.

Therefore there is a possibility (and I wouldn't put it any more strongly), that the results obtained could have been due solely to weather conditions, and nothing more complicated than that.

[prakel]

for it is well known that AMM mating frequently takes place under poor weather conditions which carnica (and ligustica) find non-conducive to mating.

Is it that well known? Who knows it, as a result of long term comparative observation? How do we quantify 'poor weather conditions'? How bad must the weather be to allow amm a mating advantage over carnica which itself isn't generally thought of as a soft bee?

[Jon]

Is it that well known? Who knows it,

It is well repeated as opposed to well known and is one of the claims which can be traced straight back to the Beowulf Cooper books.
I say the jury is out until someone sets up a properly controlled study to look at this.
Anytime I have witnessed mating flights it has been on calm sunny days with the temperature in the high teens or low 20s.
In good weather conditions my queens are laying in 8-10 days from emergence but if conditions are poor most of them take 3 weeks plus.
I do see the odd one start to lay when it must have flown and mated in poor conditions but that would be the exception rather than the rule.
They wait in the apideas for the right conditions then they all fly and mate on the same day.
I remember one Monday night at our queen rearing group about 20+ people found eggs in their apideas. The queens had emerged 8-9 days earlier and the weather had been hot and sunny for the entire week. These were all grafted from the same Galtee queen so the virgins were pure Amm.
The thing is, all it takes is a decent weather window of 15 minutes and they can fly and mate. It has to be relentless rain and low temperatures to keep them in.

[Rosie]

These are all good questions and reinforce a point I made earlier that it's impossible to design a perfect scientific experiment, especially with bees. Nevertheless it demonstrates that races aren't all the same which is hardly surprising given the millions of years of separate evolution and climatic conditions they have been through.

Whatever the reasons for the bee's behaviour in these trials it's still good news for Amm enthusiasts and it helps explain why there are still plenty of Amm genetics everywhere despite so many years of mixing of races.

[Jon]

it helps explain why there are still plenty of Amm genetics everywhere despite so many years of mixing of races.

There is another paper which noted something similar with AMM managing to stay relatively pure in an area where there was some Buckfast.

ORIGINAL PAPER
Morphological and molecular characterization of the Landes
honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) ecotype for genetic conservation

James P. Strange

Lionel Garnery

Walter S. Sheppard
Received: 13 March 2007 / Accepted: 21 May 2007 / Published online: 6 July 2007


Abstract
A population of honey bees (Apis mellifera mellifera
L.) with an annual colony brood cycle adapted to
a locally abundant floral source in the Landes region of
Southwest France is the subject of genetic conservation
efforts. This population is maintained by local beekeepers
in an area that experiences both an annual seasonal influx
of non-local colonies and the permanent culture of im-
ported stock. However, some colonies native to the Landes
do not have the adapted brood cycle and their status as
ecotypic are in question. The present study used mor-
phology, mitochondrial DNA and microsatellites to char-
acterize the endemic population and suggests further
genetic conservation strategies. These methods yielded
different degrees of discrimination of native and imported
colonies and provided a powerful suite of tools for local
resource managers. Colonies from the Landes could be
differentiated from non-local French
A. m. mellifera populations using morphometric analysis, and from non-native
and reference populations using mtDNA and microsatellites. Seven morphological characters were identified by
discriminant analysis as informative for delineating the
Landes ecotype from other A. m. mellifera populations.
Mitochondrial haplotypes for the population were characterized and five microsatellite loci were found to be
informative in characterizing the Landes population.
Asymmetric gene flow detected with microsatellite alleles
was observed to be 5.5–5.9% from imported to native
stocks of honey bees while introgression of native micro-
satellite alleles into imported colonies was 21.6%


Morphological and molecular characterization of the Landes honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) ecotype for genetic conservation (http://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/22518/PDF)


For anyone interested in breeding AMM, I am collating these links on a page on the NIHBS site (http://nihbs.org/honeybee-information/research-papers-amm-and-bee-breeding/). Just added that one from Poland, thanks Steve.

[Rosie]

It is well repeated as opposed to well known and is one of the claims which can be traced straight back to the Beowulf Cooper books.
I say the jury is out until someone sets up a properly controlled study to look at this.
Anytime I have witnessed mating flights it has been on calm sunny days with the temperature in the high teens or low 20s.
In good weather conditions my queens are laying in 8-10 days from emergence but if conditions are poor most of them take 3 weeks plus.
I do see the odd one start to lay when it must have flown and mated in poor conditions but that would be the exception rather than the rule.
They wait in the apideas for the right conditions then they all fly and mate on the same day.
I remember one Monday night at our queen rearing group about 20+ people found eggs in their apideas. The queens had emerged 8-9 days earlier and the weather had been hot and sunny for the entire week. These were all grafted from the same Galtee queen so the virgins were pure Amm.
The thing is, all it takes is a decent weather window of 15 minutes and they can fly and mate. It has to be relentless rain and low temperatures to keep them in.

Hi Jon

Hopefully Peter Edwards is watching this and will be able to confirm that he has seen a queen returning with a mating sign at 5 degrees C.

How do you know Galtee are pure Amm?

Are you sure queens can mate properly in 15 minutes? I suspect it takes at least all afternoon and probably 2 to gather all the sperm they need. This has been shown to be the case with Caucasions although I don't know if it applies to other races.

[Jon]

it's impossible to design a perfect scientific experiment, especially with bees.

Beats the hell out of anecdote though!

[Jon]

Hopefully Peter Edwards is watching this and will be able to confirm that he has seen a queen returning with a mating sign at 5 degrees C.

I heard him say that at the conference in Cahir. Was it definitely a mating flight showing the mating sign? I have seen them take orientation flights at low temperatures including one I posted about in November a couple of years ago.


How do you know Galtee are pure Amm?
I don't for sure but studies such as the Jensen and Pedersen paper would strongly suggest that.
Most of the Irish samples in the study were Galtee related.


Are you sure queens can mate properly in 15 minutes?
Jerzy Woyke published papers on mating flights. Most queens fly just once to mate but some fly 2 or 3 times and occasionally more.

The apiary vicinity mating I have seen in my own apiaries takes 10-15 minutes.
I find eggs in the apidea 2-3 days after the mating flight.

[Rosie]

It usually does Jon but I am confident that it's possible for anecdote to be right when science is wrong. Blind faith is a mistake and anecdote has lead both Little John and Prakel to rightly question the report I cited. Until we develop the motivation and financial incentives to scientifically and thoroughly investigate races a lot of bee science will continue to be questioned. Whenever I read a new paper I ask myself how it will affect my own beekeeping but I often wonder what would have happened if the research had been done with my own bees in my own situation. Thanks for the Landes stuff, by the way.

[Jon]

Woyke papers on mating flights

http://jerzy_woyke.users.sggw.pl/causesmat1964.pdf

http://jerzy_woyke.users.sggw.pl/1962_nat_artins.pdf

[Jon]

It usually does Jon but I am confident that it's possible for anecdote to be right when science is wrong.


anecdote has lead both Little John and Prakel to rightly question the report I cited
Any science should be questioned as a matter of routine. There is good science and quack science.

I would consider myself a very interested observer of bee behaviour - but it is possible to kid yourself as to the underlying reasons for what you are observing or get confused as to what you are actually observing. Ley lines springs to mind!

Look at the number of beginners on the forums who ask if their bees are swarming when they are witnessing multiple orientation flights after a spell of bad weather. Someone asked that question in November on BKF.

I look at the design and methodology of the study to see if it holds water. Most of the studies claiming that neonicotinoid pesticides are making the sky fall are easy to pick holes in for example.

[prakel]

Blind faith is a mistake and anecdote has lead both Little John and Prakel to rightly question the report I cited.

Hi Rosie, just to be clear about this, I'm not questioning the paper -on the grounds that the people who wrote it are cleverer than me AND they made the effort to carry out the experiment, in fact, having read it previously as the result of a search for references to miniplus usage I hadn't formed any issues with the study itself. My questions were aimed at Little_John's post, notably the factual statement that amm frequently mate under poor weather conditions which carnica find non-conducive to mating.

With regard to whether the usage of carnica workers in all of the mating nucs had any effect on the mating of the queens, if I thought that there was an issue, I would probably have speculated that it would skew the results in the other direction -amm queens mating with carnica drones.

[Jon]

With regard to whether the usage of carnica workers in all of the mating nucs had any effect on the mating of the queens, if I thought that there was an issue, I would probably have speculated that it would skew the results in the other direction -amm queens mating with carnica drones.

Not if one of the main drivers of a mating flight is to mate to unrelated drones and the workers have some role in facilitating this.

It may be totally irrelevant but a well designed study needs to eliminate the alternate explanations.

[Little_John]

Is it that well known? Who knows it, as a result of long term comparative observation? How do we quantify 'poor weather conditions'? How bad must the weather be to allow amm a mating advantage over carnica which itself isn't generally thought of as a soft bee?

I'm attaching 3 graphics of screen-grabs (as this forum's attachment method isn't working for me) from 'Breeding Better Bees' which may be of interest. I won't take the bait from the rest of your post, for as a former scientist myself I have little faith in single-variable biological experiments themselves, but far more faith in reports of experientially-gained knowledge from reputable sources. Of course, if you should consider the opinions of Messrs Ruttner, Dews, Milner, Cooper and Mobus to be mere worthless anecdote, then there's nothing further I can usefully add to this debate.

http://i44.tinypic.com/1zuaso.png
http://i40.tinypic.com/nf3ee1.png
http://i44.tinypic.com/15cobiq.png

[prakel]

I won't take the bait from the rest of your post

Lets not go down that route, there was no 'bait' in my post at all, straight questions. I've no axe to grind on this subject. This forum benefits from a self regulated willingness to discuss this stuff and to learn from each other in an open and friendly manner.

Now, with regards to Ruttner's comment (which you highlighted, page 16) regarding wet summers being more significant (to colony survival) than cold winters, where did the reporting of Ruttners words actually stop? Without a specific quotation it's hard to know whether he said, or the writer added, "This has a strong selective influence in favour of the dark bee".

My interest is a general one as I don't have these amm bees but of the three pages which you posted by far the most interesting paragraph for me was one which you didn't highlight, page 17, regarding Dr Gudrun Koenger's work. I think that a write up of her research would make for interesting holiday reading.

[prakel]

Not if one of the main drivers of a mating flight is to mate to unrelated drones and the workers have some role in facilitating this.

Interesting hypothesis which I hadn't thought of....

[Jon]

LJ
My own observations of apiary vicinity mating are completely at odds with the observations of Beo Cooper who claimed it was a strategy used by AMM to mate in a brief interlude of poor weather.
When I see AVM it is always on a perfect warm day, blue sky between 12.30 and 4.30 PM.
I don't know why some queens fly to drone congregation areas whereas others mate in the apiary.
I am not even sure which strategy is most common in my bees but AVM is not unusual at all.

Most of the book - Breeding Better Bees (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4V94etycswoC&pg=PA46&lpg=PA46&dq=breeding+better+bees&source=bl&ots=QRe41x-cxb&sig=gnQz8ScXTxKgy4qo-Pk4j1bDxM8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=SIa9Uqu7D-LW7Qa344CYAw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=breeding%20better%20bees&f=false) - is online for anyone interested

[Pete L]

LJ
My own observations of apiary vicinity mating are completely at odds with the observations of Beo Cooper who claimed it was a strategy used by AMM to mate in a brief interlude of poor weather.
When I see AVM it is always on a perfect warm day, blue sky between 12.30 and 4.30 PM.
I don't know why some queens fly to drone congregation areas whereas others mate in the apiary.
I am not even sure which strategy is most common in my bees but AVM is not unusual at all.

Jon,
My own observations are the same as yours, also with virgin queens from different sub species within the same mating apiaries going out on mating flights at more or less the same time.
Also going out on these AVM flights several times during the course of an afternoon, several minutes great activity followed by several minutes of quiet...then off again.
One single drone can supply a queen with more enough sperm, but most of it is ejected to make room for more, and more genetic diversity.

[mbc]

Beats the hell out of anecdote though!

Quite.
Anything anecdotal needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, especially if it conveniently explains a pet theory.
Well designed experiments carried out rigorously with large sample numbers and suitable controls remove doubt.
Edit: Which is quite depressing when considering how difficult it is for anyone with real bees to get their hands on research funding.

[prakel]

Jon,
My own observations are the same as yours, also with virgin queens from different sub species within the same mating apiaries going out on mating flights at more or less the same time.

Hi, working with different sub-species as you do, have you ever seen differences in drone activity to match Gilles Fert's observation of Italian and Caucasian drones flying at different times (which I copied in an earlier post in this thread)?

[prakel]

At the risk of veering slightly off fatshark's initial topic there's an interesting paper Experimental Analysis of Reproductive Interspecies Isolation of Apis Mellifera L. and Apis Cerana Fabr. (http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&ved=0CEcQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fhal.archives-ouvertes.fr%2Fdocs%2F00%2F89%2F06%2F06%2FPDF%2Fhal-00890606.pdf&ei=cqK-Up7AIq2a0QXGjYH4DQ&usg=AFQjCNGcKA4LSuxi9iLd7SK_R8xVwRL0kQ&bvm=bv.58187178,d.d2k) By Ruttner and Maul which I came across while looking for references to Dr Koeniger's work.

[prakel]

......the most interesting paragraph for me was one which you didn't highlight, page 17, regarding Dr Gudrun Koenger's work. I think that a write up of her research would make for interesting holiday reading.

It looks like she's a provisional lecturer at this year's National Honey Show on the subject of 'mating strategies to avoid inbreeding'. A search of her work across the net shows some really interesting stuff so she may well be the one to watch this year.

[prakel]

At the risk of veering slightly off fatshark's initial topic there's an interesting paper Experimental Analysis of Reproductive Interspecies Isolation of Apis Mellifera L. and Apis Cerana Fabr. (http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&ved=0CEcQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fhal.archives-ouvertes.fr%2Fdocs%2F00%2F89%2F06%2F06%2FPDF%2Fhal-00890606.pdf&ei=cqK-Up7AIq2a0QXGjYH4DQ&usg=AFQjCNGcKA4LSuxi9iLd7SK_R8xVwRL0kQ&bvm=bv.58187178,d.d2k) By Ruttner and Maul which I came across while looking for references to Dr Koeniger's work.

To which, I'll add this recent report of Asian/European bees inter-breeding in Australia, taken from ABJ extra:

http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=5fd2b1aa990e63193af2a573d&id=91756a7f5f&e=57f94334d8


Beekeepers are on alert after tests found Australia's European honeybees are breeding with the destructive Asian honeybee.

Sperm from the Asian honeybee, that carries the deadly Varroa mite, was found in one third of commercial queens tested in the Cairns region of Far North Queensland.

It produces useless eggs, reducing the honey and pollination services from affected hives.

But beekeepers are not surprised or alarmed.

[prakel]

Found this in The Book of Beekeeping by W.B.Webster c1888


The fertilisation of queens by selected drones at other times of the year is very uncertain. We will give the best methods to be adopted to accomplish this end under these disadvantageous circumstances. Upon the evening before the queen is expected to fly, all the nuclei, together with the hive containing the drones, are removed from their stands, placed in a cool, perfectly dark place -the entrances of the hives being closed with perforated zinc-and left until the following day about 5.30 or 6 p.m. They are then brought out, and placed on their respective stands. On no account intermix them. As the drones from all other colonies will have ceased flying, or are just returning, at this time a good chance is obtained of getting the queens properly fertilised. When the hives have all been placed in position -which must be so that the sun shines in the entrances -a little honey is smeared just at the flight holes of the nuclei, and some thin, warm honey poured over the frames of the hive containing the drones; this raises a great commotion in the hive, and consequent increase of temperature. The drones will then fly forth, and the queens likewise. It is very easy to get the queens to fly out, but more difficulty is experienced in getting the drones to do so. Sometimes it is expedient, if they will not fly, to lift out a frame, and toss them in the air; but do not do so if there is a possibility of their flying without such extreme measures.

[prakel]

Not much new in beekeeping: Dzierzon's rational bee-keeping. 1882


Meanwhile, the beekeeper may have some influence in effecting true mating, by exciting with liquid food given or syringed into them, some of the hives that have most Italian drones and queens ready for flight, thus inciting them to play in front of the hives earlier, while the other drones are still resting quietly in their hives. It is evident, then, that it is better to have the Italian drones in few hives but in large numbers. By making the stocks queenless, the drones can be preserved far on into the autumn, so as to have some ground for hoping for the genuine mating of the queens that take their marriage flight after the extinction of the other drones. To set up Italian stocks in an entirely isolated apiary is really not necessary, nor even advantageous. The more hives there are at the same apiary, the greater is the opportunity of assisting the Italians with brood-combs and bees. The more young Italian queens can be lodged out, so many the more genuine ones will there be among them. But drones must not be allowed to be reared in the other hives.