How does the beekeeping industry help farmers increase their income?
Editor's note: The beekeeping industry occupies a relatively important position in our national economy. It not only provides society with abundant bee products, but can also help farmers increase their income and become prosperous. At present, China raises about 6.5 million bee colonies, with an annual output of nearly 200,000 tons of honey, 1,500 tons of royal jelly, and 1,100 tons of pollen, all ranking first in the world's beekeeping industry. Honey and royal jelly are China's traditional export commodities. Annual honey exports exceed 100,000 tons, and royal jelly exceeds 900 tons, with export volumes ranking first in the world. Bee product exports earn more than 80 million US dollars in foreign exchange.
Techniques for Introducing and Breeding Fine Queen Bees
With the development of science and technology in the beekeeping industry and the improvement of beekeepers' scientific and cultural levels, introducing and breeding fine bee species has become an important task in modern beekeeping production.
Introducing stock and luring the queen: After receiving the breeding queen bee, the introducer should first feed it a little clear water. Dip a finger in water and drop a few drops onto the iron gauze, not too much, and certainly do not soak the bee's body, so as to meet the bee's need for water.
Choose warm, clear weather when bees are flying and foraging normally. From strong colonies, separately take out two old pupa combs that are emerging, place them in another box, shake in 2 to 3 frames of young bees, and place the box in a new location to form the lure-in colony. This colony should have 1 comb of honey and pollen to ensure sufficient feed. After the newly formed colony has flown fully for 1 to 2 days, the queen bee can be lured in. If it happens to be rainy weather after receiving the breeding queen, organizing a queen-luring colony is more difficult. You can take out one old pupa comb that is emerging and one honey-pollen comb to form another colony, then catch about 1,000 newly emerged young bees from the large colony, place the colony alone in a new site, and introduce the queen bee the same day.
When luring the queen, consider the number of bees, bee age, external climate, and nectar source conditions. If the queen-luring colony consists entirely of newly emerged young bees, the outside temperature is suitable, and nectar and pollen source conditions are excellent, experienced beekeepers may open the queen cage, place it in the box, and let the queen crawl out onto the comb by herself. After 1 hour, gently lift the comb to check whether she has been accepted. If the colony or external conditions are not ideal and there is no 100% certainty that directly releasing the queen will succeed, hang the queen cage with frame wire between the bee spaces. The queen cage and the lure-in colony should be mixed in scent 30 minutes in advance. To prevent the queen from flying away during release, it is best to do this indoors.
Introducing stock and observation: After the breeding queen bee is successfully introduced, she should generally begin to resume egg laying within 7 days, with speed going from slow to fast and the egg area concentrated and contiguous. In addition, the queen's egg-laying capacity is closely related to colony strength, external climate, and nectar source conditions. Weak colony strength, poor nectar source conditions, and low temperatures all affect the expression of the queen's egg-laying capacity.
Twenty-one days after the queen lays eggs, the offspring worker bees emerge one after another. The purity or hybridity of the queen should be assessed by observing the offspring worker bees. For example, the Songdan No. 1 (Baishan No. 5) queen bee itself is black; its offspring drones are black, worker bees are mixed-colored, with more yellow-bodied bees and very few black worker bees. This is also true when breeding new queens. This is its normal body-color genetic phenotype. Songdan No. 2 queens are yellow, drones are mostly yellow with very few black, and worker bees are mixed-colored. Black-line species (Carniolan) and other black queen stocks have queens, worker bees, and drones all black. Only a few queens that underwent instrumental insemination to improve productivity produce mixed-colored worker bee offspring, and a few produce black drones and worker bees. Beekeepers should have a correct understanding of the genetic characteristics of these breeding queens, so as to avoid misunderstandings that affect the use of the bee species.
Breeding new queens: The purpose of beekeepers introducing stock is to breed new queens to replace the queens in their own apiary. Breeding high-quality queen bees is a highly technical task. Beekeepers should join with nearby apiaries to concentrate on breeding large numbers of high-quality breeding drones, eliminate drones from inferior or diseased colonies, and begin breeding queens only after the breeding drones are capped. Queen rearing can also be carried out using time differences or regional differences. The ultimate goal is to ensure that fine virgin queens mate with high-quality breeding drones. If non-breeding drones cannot be controlled and virgin queens mate with inferior or diseased drones, the offspring performance will inevitably be poor, such as poor reproductive capacity, low economic benefits, and high disease incidence, causing the misleading impression that introducing stock causes disease.
Offspring observation: After introducing stock, it is generally not advisable to promote it on a large scale. Instead, some new queens should be bred to replace the original queens and compared with the original bee species under the same conditions, to examine whether the offspring of the breeding queen have advantages over the original bee species in reproductive capacity, productivity, disease resistance, stress resistance, overwintering and oversummering performance, and whether they can adapt to the local climate and nectar-pollen source conditions. If the difference is significant, it indicates that the variety is suitable for large-scale propagation and promotion locally; otherwise, other varieties should be introduced.
Rotational replacement of species: From the practice of bee genetic breeding, the first hybrid generation generally shows the most obvious heterosis, the second generation declines somewhat, and after the third generation, heterosis appears only under particularly appropriate combinations. Therefore, for production use, it is best to replace the stock once every year to avoid the decline of heterosis caused by using it for successive generations.