Why should high-quality queen bees be used in beekeeping?

In using high-quality queen bees, three main aspects should be considered: selecting Chinese bee (Apis cerana) breeds with excellent breed characteristics and production performance, using new queen bees, and preventing the degeneration of the Chinese bee breed used. Using queen bees with excellent traits is the guarantee for strong colony rearing of Chinese bees. In Chinese bee rearing, breeds should be selected that have characteristics such as strong egg-laying ability of the queen, strong colony strength, weak swarming tendency, high yield, and strong disease resistance (especially resistance to Chinese sacbrood disease). Excellent queen bees can be obtained through bee breeding production departments, but it must be noted that introduced queen bees should demonstrate their excellent traits in the beekeeping production of the area where they are used. When a bee farm breeds its own queen bees, attention should be paid to selecting colonies with strong egg-laying ability of the queen, weak swarming tendency, the ability to maintain relatively large colony strength, high yield, and strong disease resistance (especially resistance to Chinese sacbrood disease) as mother colonies and father colonies to breed new queens. In the production practice of Chinese bee rearing, the egg-laying ability of a Chinese bee queen generally declines significantly after 1 year of use, leading to decreased colony strength, increased swarming tendency, reduced disease resistance, and decreased production capacity. Therefore, in Chinese bee production, the queen should generally be replaced once a year, that is, replacing the queen during the spring swarming season, using new queens every year. Professional Chinese bee farms with the necessary conditions should replace queens once in each of the two swarming seasons of spring and winter, replacing queens 2 times a year, to lay the foundation for maintaining strong colony production of Chinese bees year-round. The degeneration of the Chinese bee breed is one of the important reasons why Chinese bees are difficult to maintain strong colonies. To date, most Chinese bee farms have long bred queen bees on their own, and queen bees mate with close relatives, leading to decreased colony vitality and the inability to maintain the colony strength achievable in the wild state. In strong colony rearing of Chinese bees, attention should be paid to the problem of breed degeneration. Excellent breeds should be periodically and appropriately introduced, or introduced breeds should be used as the maternal parent and colonies with good production performance among the Chinese bees raised on the farm should be used as the paternal parent to breed queen bees, so as to avoid the disadvantages brought by inbreeding and prevent breed degeneration.