Selecting for honey bee genetics is a daunting and fairly complicated subject. However, with a little understanding over the simplest basics of the topic, a beekeeper who hopes to produce their own queens can be started in the right direction. With that in mind, I hope to give you some very basic insight on selecting for traits when rearing your own queens. From there, you will have to research further to have the more in-depth knowledge needed to fully grasp the concept.
We will start with the VERY basics. How queens mate. Well when a Mommy bee and a Daddy bee love each other very much....wait...that isn't how this story begins. The story is somewhat like the whole chicken and the egg debate. There is no true beginning. So I will just pick a starting point and go from there.
A queen bee is nothing more than a worker bee on a different diet. A worker bee is fed royal jelly for the first few days of her development after hatching from egg to larva. After that, she is fed "bee bread", or a mixture of honey and pollen. A queen however, is never fed this bee bread and is continually fed royal jelly throughout her development. Keep in mind, this portion of the topic is a lengthy discussion on it's own so I highly suggest doing your own research on that specific topic. However, it is likely that I will be covering that topic in a future article as well.
So, continuing on. After approximately 16 days of development, the queen (called a virgin queen or princess at this stage) emerges from her queen cell. From there over the next few days her exoskeleton hardens and she runs around (or is chased by workers) in an effort to develop her body for flight. Once she is fit for flight, she goes on mating flights. The virgin queen leaves the colony, flying in most cases 1-2 miles away, in search for what is known as the Drone Congregation Area (DCA). This DCA is a naturally occurring gathering point for the drones from all the local colonies to fly around in search for virgin queens. While in the DCA, the virgin queen mates with several (12-15 on average) drones. Once the queen has successfully mated with enough drones, she returns to the colony. Upon return to the colony, the queen's body processes the semen collected from the many drones for a few days at which point she can begin laying fertilized (worker) or unfertilized (drone) eggs.
Now that we have our brief overview out of the way, let's dive into the meat and potatoes of this article. I think it is important at this point to explain a few basic terms in relation to queen production in an effort to make the rest of this article easier to understand. The term "F0" is used when describing a queen who has been artificially inseminated. In other words, she has been artificially mated and never actually went on mating flights. A brilliant scientist/beekeeper has selected a virgin queen and, using very specialized equipment, has artificially inseminated her using the semen gathered from distinctly selected drones. The term "F1" is used for the first generation of "open mated" queens. This term is typically in reference to the daughter queens produced by the F0 queen who have then been allowed to mate naturally. "F2" is the generation beyond that. Meaning that the open mated queen had daughters who were turned into queens and also allowed to open mate. Though typically not referenced, the generations go on from there as F3, F4 and so on.
Using the above extremely basic diagram, you can start to see how traits are passed down from generation to generation. It is far more advanced than this, but this should give you the most basics of understanding.
Let us imagine that each color displayed is a trait. We could imagine that red is gentleness, blue is the aptitude to build straight comb, green is pest/disease resistance, yellow is the presence of Africanized Honey Bee (AHB) genetics, and so on.
As you can see, each worker bee gets half of it's DNA (and therefor genetic traits) from the queen and half from one of the many drones that she mated with. The first generation of open mated offspring from F1 (also known as a hybrid) are apt to have many varying traits. As mentioned before, you see that the yellow (AHB) in the F1 line is present but minimal. If the F1 queen mated with 15 drones, one of which were AHB, on average only 1 in every 15 workers she produces will express the traits of the AHB. This tends to not be an issue in most situations. The colony as a whole could still be extremely docile.
However, when further generations of queens are raised from that same line, the risk of highly defensive workers begins to increase substantially. As you can see from the diagram, this particular second generation queen, F2, was raised from an egg that was fertilized by an AHB drone. So half the genetic traits of every worker this F2 produces will from the AHB line. Now imagine that this F2 queen is allowed to open mate in an area that contains AHB drones. Not only is every worker at least half AHB, but some workers may contain full AHB genetics and therefor are highly likely to be more defensive or aggressive.
Though I truly believe it is extremely valuable to maintain a locally acclimated genetic line within your apiary, it is very important to understand how these genetic traits are expressed as the generations of queens continue on.
It is my opinion, and my opinion only, if you decide to produce your own queens for your apiary, your "Queen Mother" (the queen who's offspring you are turning into future queens) should be an F0 or artificially inseminated queen from a reputable source. This is especially true if your apiary is in an area, such as the desert southwest, where the AHB genetics are present and your apiary is within an area where people or livestock may be present.
This was the most simplest of overviews. However, with this basic understanding in hand, you now have the knowledge to perform intelligent research for a more in-depth look at producing quality, local queens for yourself.
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