How to breed high-quality queen bees in beekeeping

As the saying goes: “one good queen yields a thousand jin of honey&rdquo. Though this saying is a bit exaggerated, it is enough to show the role of the queen bee in the colony, but a good queen is not obtained easily. Below, the editor has compiled some queen-rearing experience from beekeeping management and explains it as follows.

How to breed good queen bees when keeping honeybees

1. Choose a bee breed suitable for your region for queen rearing. You can introduce stock from a proper breeder bee farm, or select and rear from your own apiary by transferring larvae; it is best to introduce a breeding queen from elsewhere once every two years to avoid breed degeneration.

2. Having a good breeding queen does not necessarily mean you can rear a good queen; there must also be good or supplementary nectar and pollen sources, which is another main condition for rearing a good queen. If external nectar and pollen conditions are poor, you cannot rear queens; when nectar and pollen source conditions are average, you should carry out reward feeding every evening.

3. Having the above two conditions is still not enough; you must also use large eggs for queen rearing. Queen bees reared from large eggs have a greater birth weight and develop well. 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 afterward gradually become smaller as the egg-laying amount increases.

4. Choose strong colonies for queen rearing; strong colonies are superior in all aspects. With 12 frames of bees or more, sufficient nectar and pollen in the nest, and a queenright colony, queen rearing is best. Confine the original queen in the brood box, select 1 to 2 frames of young larval brood, first place the queen-rearing frame with queen cups between the two larval brood frames to clean for 4 to 6 hours, then take it out and transfer 2-day-old young larvae to encourage acceptance; as long as a few are accepted, that is enough. After 24 hours, take it out, remove the larvae, use a brush to coat each queen cup that needs larval transfer with the accepted royal jelly, and then immediately transfer suitable young larvae within 12 hours. If the virgin queen reared emerges on the 11th day after larval transfer, the quality will not be very good; only those that emerge on the afternoon or at night of the 12th day are the best virgin queens.

5. Organize mating nuclei, preferably with 1 to 2 frames of bees and sufficient nectar and pollen. A relatively large colony strength will waste the nursing capacity of worker bees and is unfavorable to the development and production of the whole apiary. One day before the virgin queen emerges, place the queen cup in the mating nucleus where there are many bees and honey. After the virgin queen emerges, if she has crippled limbs or is small in size, she should be culled immediately. Virgin queens usually mate and lay eggs from the 9th to the 11th day after emergence, and in cases the 12th or 13th day; virgin queens that mate after more than half a month should also be culled. After the virgin queen begins laying eggs, whether she is a good queen still depends on her performance after egg laying.

6. Whether she is a good queen must still be determined by various aspects of performance after egg laying. In the mating nucleus, after she has filled 1 frame with eggs, she should immediately be exchanged with an empty comb in a strong colony; after laying 4 consecutive frames of eggs, introduce her into a production colony for further performance evaluation. If her egg laying, honey production, royal jelly production, pollen production, etc. in the production colony are not lower than the yield of colonies with the same colony strength, or are even higher, then this new queen can be rated as a good queen.

Honeybee keeping equipment  

1. Beehive: The beehive, which we often call the hive, is the place where honeybees rest, reproduce, and store food. The beehive consists of several parts, including the outer cover, straw curtain, cover cloth, inner cover, comb, divider board, and queen excluder. Both sides of the comb have thousands of neatly arranged, interconnected hexagonal cells.  

2. Bee comb: A comb fixed to a wooden frame is called one frame of comb. According to the amount of honey, pollen, and larvae on the comb, they are respectively called honey comb, pollen comb, and brood comb. According to the age of the brood, brood combs are further divided into: egg comb, larval comb, sealed brood comb, and empty comb. A beehive containing 10 frames of comb is the most widely used standard beehive. By stacking supers, the hive can be expanded in time.  

3. Bee space: The distance between each comb is called the bee space.  

4. Queen excluder: The queen excluder is used to separate the brood-rearing area from the honey-storage area, which helps honey mature and honey harvesting, and improves production efficiency.

Basic understanding of honeybees  

Before keeping bees, let us first understand some knowledge about honeybees. At present, China keeps 7 million colonies of honeybees, of which 90% are European honeybees imported from abroad, including Italian bees and Northeast black bees, etc., and 10% are Chinese bees. Italian bees, referred to as Italian bees. They are widely kept in North China and Northeast China. Italian bee queens have strong egg-laying capacity, and worker bees have strong brood-rearing capacity, playing an important role not only in production but also as important breeding material.  

Northeast black bees are an transitional type of European black bees. They have strong reproductive capacity and good overwintering performance in cold regions. However, in low-latitude regions they cannot maintain strong colonies. Chinese bees, referred to as Chinese bees, are suitable for living in regions such as Northeast China, Northwest China, North China, East China, and Southwest China. Chinese bees fly agilely, have a keen sense of smell, are diligent, and have strong disease resistance, cold tolerance, and heat tolerance. However, their honey production and royal jelly secretion capacity are slightly lower than those of European honeybees. Through this introduction, you can choose suitable varieties according to the specific conditions of each region and adopt corresponding keeping measures.

Summer management of honeybee keeping  

1. Preparation for the nectar flow period: In order to ensure high honey and royal jelly yields during the main nectar source period, you should try to keep large numbers of worker bees in the colony in an active working state, concentrating strength on collecting nectar and producing royal jelly. This work cannot be done in time during the main nectar source period; preparations must be made fully according to the beekeeping production plan, local conditions, the start date of the main nectar source, and the connection between various nectar sources.  

2. Organizing colonies: The honey collection of strong colonies is far higher than that of weak colonies. During the main nectar source period, an apiary can artificially adjust the colonies and hives, organizing some strong colonies for honey collection, which yields much more honey than having every colony collect honey. In addition to the method of merging weak colonies before the nectar flow period, a simpler and easier method is the main-secondary pairing method. For two adjacent hives of bees, move the secondary hive away so that field bees join the main hive; the main hive colony concentrates its foragers, and depending on colony strength, add combs or add a second super, while the moved secondary hive colony, although its foragers decrease, still has many nurse bees, which is beneficial to reproduction and can create conditions for honey collection at the next nectar source.  

3. Summering management: Summer climate is hot, nectar and pollen sources are lacking, and enemies are serious; this is a difficult time for beekeeping in South China. If keeping and management are poor, colony strength will be greatly weakened, causing autumn decline. On the surface, the difficulty of summering appears to be caused by high temperatures, but in essence it is the result of lacking nectar and pollen sources. As long as there are nectar and pollen sources, honeybees can still use the lower temperatures in the morning and evening to collect during hot seasons, and the queen bee does not completely stop laying.

Honeybee keeping in our country is still relatively common. We all know that the market demand for honey is very large. Honey is the best tonic for beauty and skin care, so whether eaten by oneself or given as a gift, it is very good. Moreover, the honey market in our country is currently rather chaotic, and good honey sells very well on the market.