Artficial Insemination - viability?

[Castor]

Team,

<dons techie hat>

Does anyone here do AI?

I've been watching the Schley insemination series on Youtube - not beyond he wit of man is it? One less variable managed in mein kampf for an ordered bee population.

So - a blessing or a curse? Do I go out and learn?

[busybeephilip]

Yes, it has its uses.

If your just wanting a few queens for yourself then its better just rearing and open mating from the best stock. If you have a real interest in wanting to achieve and maintain pure lines of bees with known parantage then it the way to go. The process of injecting is easy enough but most persons struggle getting enough drones and harvesting the semen. It looks easy on you tube but that person has had a fair bit of practice.

The other problem is the cost, a rig like in my picture could cost you near £2000 from schelly. You could do a home made version and there are several designs out there if you search the web

Microscope - bi-nocular disecting type about x20

glass tips - I make my own as I have a puller, need a graticule to measure the tip ends

You need gas, you can use BOC and hire a small cylinder if you are intending to do a lot, or use soda stream gas or air pistol/bike puncture repair gas canisters

You need to rear lots of drones of the correct age, drone flight box, be able to prepare solutions and sterization of same

You need to be able to bank queens

Lots to think about

[Castor]

Lots to think about

Thanks for coming back. Lots to think about there is indeed.

For me it's an issue of comparative cost. £2k for the kit is way cheaper and more convenient than an isolated island, although the island appeals to me very much today....

More seriously, where I live, the chance of creating and maintaining an uncontaminated black bee population is close to zero unless I can flood the area over a period of time - several seasons ... AI/II is one possible way or part-way of doing that.

[Little_John]

In an isolated area, 'natural forces' select those drones which successfully mate. In AI, a human being chooses which drones get to 'mate' - is that not a concern ?

LJ

[Little_John]

In an isolated area, 'natural forces' select those drones which successfully mate. In AI, a human being chooses which drones get to 'mate' - is that not a concern ?

LJ

So I guess by no-one commenting, that drone selection by humans isn't seen as being a problem then ?

If that should be your view, then I suggest that a read of:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030927191043/http://www.biologie.uni-halle.de/zool/mol_ecol/KNSCH2003.pdf might change your thinking, for it shows pretty clearly I think, that there are some 'natural forces' at work regarding drone selection about which we know absolutely nothing.

Like most people I held the view that it was simply a case of the strongest drones which got to mate, and so I duly incorporated a variable-speed wind chamber arrangement to 'select' those drones entering my experimental captive mating chamber - but now I realise that this simplistic approach may be seriously flawed. But - what other system of selection could possibly be used ?

Looks like the isolated mating area approach has some hidden advantages to it ...

LJ

[Castor]

That's strange - I thought I had commented......


Interesting stuff LJ. I've been mullling this for a while now about the drone selection process and how to assess it. The popular literature is all about the queen - rarely does the fitness of the drone(s) get a mention.

The fluid dynamics method you used (gotta love that!) is as you say, probably flawed, but also as you say, what else? What other criteria are available to the bee?

Did you achieve mating in the chamber? I wonder if it can be done in a polytunnel?

[Jon]

And don't forget that recent paper which looked at AMM and Carnica populations in Poland.
There was something in play which caused queens to mate predominantly with one race of drone or the other which was not random.

[busybeephilip]

I read about selective race matings in one of the old bibba book (beowolf cooper?) height and temperature was cited.

The Kraus paper is basically confirming that the most fit drones belonging to the dominant colonies get the girl. II selects drones based on any of the characteristics you fancy or if you want to be random then used pooled semen from all you drone colonies. dont forget the procedure was originally developed to study genetics in bees

[Jon]

This is the thread (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/showthread.php?1519-Horner-method-for-controlled-mating&highlight=poland) which discussed related stuff such as the AmmCarnica crosses in the Polish study.

[Little_John]

Did you achieve mating in the chamber? I wonder if it can be done in a polytunnel?

I agree with you - drones provide 50% of the genetics, and yet their selection seldom features in discussions.

The problem with using polytunnels or even HUGE glasshouses (it's been tried), is that the drones will pin themselves up against the upper surface as they try to gain altitude. But - there is a way to fool them - check out US Patent #5158497

It's far too early to talk about results - I'm still working on getting troublesome parts of the equipment to work - hopefully next year will see some evidence of whether it's a viable method or not.

People have been trying to achieve this for well over a hundred years without success, so although I'm optimistic (like - you have to be ...), I ain't taking any bets. :)

LJ

[Little_John]

The Kraus paper is basically confirming that the most fit drones belonging to the dominant colonies get the girl.


What they saying is that they haven't a clue how colony 'fitness' - thus which drones will get to mate - is determined:

We found clear evidence for an extensive diversity in
male mating success at the colony level. Some colonies
had significantly more matings (about an order of
magnitude) than other drone producing colonies in the
same year. This is remarkable, because we had taken
great care to standardize conditions for the drone
producing colonies. All drone mothers were sister
queens, all host colonies were of equal size and all had
similar numbers of drones in the colony (two covered
frames).

In our experiment the ‘fit’ colonies seem to have
produced males which not only out-competed males
from other colonies in mating, but also were more
successful in post-mating competition. The fit colonies
produced drones with a higher reproductive success than
those of the other, less successful colonies. We do not
know which effect caused the increased success of drones
from specific colonies.

Although the actual mechanism for this post-mating
selection in our study must remain open, this is to our
knowledge the first evidence for differences in the male
reproductive success for honeybees in a natural mating
situation.

LJ

[Little_John]

BTW - I found a 1994 paper by a bloke called Coelho about the flight characteristics of drones in relation to mating. I found it to be a fairly dull read to be honest, all about fuel capacity, flight duration, load-carrying capacity and so on ... I think the bloke must have been an aeronautical engineer in a former life.

There was one little snippet though which I though worth passing on - explaining why some queens fall out of the sky and some don't - maybe that's obvious to some, but this guy has actually mathematically calculated why this happens.

Essentially, it's down to why drones are so big in the first place. They need to be in order to have the strength (not speed !) to carry the queen as well as themselves during aerial mating. But the queen, being smaller, does not have the load-carrying capacity of the drone. So - if there is a clean breakaway after mating, the queen can fly on to mate with another drone - BUT - if the breakaway is not clean and the paralysed/dying drone stays connected, then the queen cannot support both of their weights and the pair fall to the ground. Simples.

LJ

[mbc]

IMHO queens choose drones, not the other way round, though she can only choose from those who reach her.

[Castor]

Thanks for your thoughts Team - my simplistic ideas about *improving* a line by II have been dashed. It strikes me that with care we could *maintain* a line, but due to the drone fitness issue there's significant doubt about *improving* it, and a significant chance of degrading it.

I need a ponder.....

[prakel]

So - if there is a clean breakaway after mating, the queen can fly on to mate with another drone - BUT - if the breakaway is not clean and the paralysed/dying drone stays connected, then the queen cannot support both of their weights and the pair fall to the ground. Simples.

LJ

Interesting sounding paper, at least it's looked at the process.

My question here is, where does the business of queens returning to the hive with the so called mating-sign fit in? Not a clean breakaway in the air, so, has she chewed the bulk of the drone away and then returned to the hive for further assistance?

Commonly held view we often see repeated is that returning with this sign is the norm. I doubt that, personally, based on a general lack of observation of it over the years but assuming that the majority are right and I'm wrong, how do queens get around this when multi-mating on a single flight? Could it be a cause of early queen failure, the queen forced to return home early and then for whatever reason failing to fly again.

[Little_John]

Interesting sounding paper, at least it's looked at the process.

Well, not exactly - he's determined this outcome from previous load-carrying calculations.

If you want a copy of the paper- let me have an email address in a PM, and I'll send it to you. Unfortunately, it's not in a nice compact .pdf format - 'cause they wanted money for that :) - so I grabbed the info as four .jpg's instead - that's a total of 1 Mb.
I've tried uploading 'em as attachments here, but the system reduces them to 80-odd k each, which won't be very readable.

'best, LJ

[Jon]

Gavin can stick stuff on the server if you contact him as long as it is not a major copyright issue.

Edit - probably is though if they wanted money for it!

[Little_John]

Hello Jon - I've just re-traced my steps regarding the source - which is:
http://www.academia.edu/836032/The_flight_characteristics_of_drones_in_relation_t o_mating

If you try to download the .pdf, you're required to log in, with password etc - so I assume there's a subscription involved - but when I hit my browser's back button, much to my surprise the paper appeared anyway, as 'greyed-out' .jpg's within an .html formatted page, with a 'pop-over' window which nags you again to register and log-in. BUT - this page (complete with pop-over) can simply be saved 'as is' - .jpg's and all. At least it can with Firefox 1.5 running under Windows 98 (don't laugh ...).

Then simply extract the .jpg's from the /files sub-directory - they're each 400-500 k at this point with 256 colours - reduce 'em to 16 colours (I use IrfanView) and they're then 250k each and quite readable. As for copyright - really couldn't say.

LJ

[gavin]

Thankfully (phew!) the paper is quite readable straight from the link with modern software ;).

G.

[Little_John]

So - nobody else on here with a coal-fired steam-driven computer then ? :)
LJ

[Jon]

Chris in France has some strange combination of computing power iirc!

[The Drone Ranger]

I dont have much interest in selective breeding myself but there was a comercial queen breeder who,s system was to confine the queens and the drobes in selected colonies until the others had less drones on the wing then let them fly.
I thought I read about it on here.
Too much bother for me I,m going to Castor Island with a net to get me some good drones
Australian he was this breeder(I think)