Detailed Explanation of Artificial Queen Rearing Methods and Technical Points
We all know that each bee colony has a queen bee. The queen bee is relatively large, and her main role is to reproduce offspring, doing nothing else. Each queen bee can lay more than 2000 eggs per day during the egg-laying season. The basic lifespan of a queen bee is about 4-6 years, and with the development of society, the role of the queen bee is no longer as significant. So if you want to artificially breed queen bees, what should you do?
How to Artificially Rear Queen Bees
1. Warm weather and stable climate: During the mating period of virgin queens, the daytime temperature should be above 20°C, and try to avoid consecutive rainy days. Nectar and pollen sources: During queen rearing, there should be good nectar and pollen sources in nature, and sufficient pollen sources are even more important. Every evening, carry out uninterrupted rewarding feeding for the breeder colonies and queen-rearing colonies.
2. Selecting parent colonies: Through investigation, select healthy, disease-free colonies whose honey or royal jelly output exceeds the average output of the entire apiary, with weak swarming tendency and rapid colony development, as parent colonies. Use the father colony to rear drones, and use the larvae of the mother colony to raise queen bees. The quantity and quality of breeding drones directly relate to the mating success rate of virgin queens, and also to the insemination effect, thereby affecting the quality of the offspring colonies.
3. Preparing queen-rearing colonies: Queen-rearing colonies are strong colonies used to nurse queen bee larvae and pupae. You should select colonies that are disease-free, free of bee mites, strong in colony strength, with at least 15 frames of bees or more as queen-rearing colonies.
Queen Bee Rearing Techniques
1. Choose bee species suitable for queen rearing in your local area. You can introduce stock from a proper breeding apiary, or select and transfer larvae from your own apiary for breeding. It is best to introduce a breeding queen from elsewhere every two years to avoid species degeneration.
2. Having a good breeding queen does not necessarily mean you can rear good queens. There must also be good or supplementary nectar and pollen sources, which is another major condition for rearing good queens. If external nectar and pollen conditions are poor, queen rearing cannot be done. When nectar and pollen conditions are average, rewarding feeding should be carried out every evening.
3. Having the above two conditions is still not enough. You must also use large eggs to rear queens. Queens reared from large eggs have greater birth weight and develop better. How are large eggs obtained? First, confine the breeding queen in a bamboo-wire cage for 5—10 days. Release the breeding queen 4 to 5 days before larval transfer to begin laying eggs. The eggs laid within 4 days after releasing the queen are relatively large in volume and weight, and gradually become smaller as the number of eggs laid increases.
What Food Do Queen Bees Eat
1. Queen bees feed on royal jelly throughout their lives. Royal jelly is the secretion from the pharyngeal glands of young worker bees that nurse larvae in the bee comb. This milky substance is like the milk of mammals and is highly nutritious and immune-functional. Normally, the lifespan of bees (worker bees or drones) is about one to six months, while queen bees generally live five to seven years because they constantly feed on royal jelly.
2. During the overwintering period, the queen bee still relies on worker bees to feed her royal jelly, but the feeding frequency and amount are much less than during the breeding period, only enough to maintain the queen bee's survival needs, and will not reach the level of causing the queen bee to lay eggs. In this regard, bees have very sophisticated control abilities.
What Role Does the Queen Bee Play
1. Egg-laying and reproduction: The main function of the queen bee is to lay eggs. All individuals in the colony (new queen bees, drones, and worker bees) are developed from eggs laid by the queen bee. A mated Chinese bee queen can lay 800-1300 eggs in a day and night, with the total annual egg production reaching more than 100,000 eggs.
2. Controlling order: The queen bee controls colony order through the “queen bee pheromone” she secretes. A few hours after losing the queen, worker bees will develop a sense of queenlessness. If the queen is lost for too long and there are no small larvae in the comb that can be transformed into queen cells, a few worker bees will lay unfertilized eggs in the comb cells.
3. Genetic carrier: The queen bee is the carrier of genetic diversity in bee breeds, directly affecting the colony's production performance, disease resistance, swarming tendency, and so on. Therefore, apiaries all select queen bees with good genetic performance, strong reproductive ability, and good disease and stress resistance to rear new queen bees.
We know that royal jelly has a nutritional role in medicine. Eating it can strengthen the body, and it has the effect of increasing appetite and restoring physical strength. Moreover, royal jelly is not nectar; it is a milky white liquid secreted by the nutritional glands of worker bees, used as food to feed queen bee larvae.