The Importance of Good Stock

Improvement of stock promises to be an important coming development in beekeeping. A technique for the artificial insemination of queen bees has been available since 1925, but until 1943 very few artificially inseminated queens were capable of laying a sufficient number of fertile eggs to build full-strength colonies. Recent improvements in the technique by Otto Mackensen and William C. Roberts enable us now to mate queens that perform as well as naturally mated queens.

Prolific queens and long-lived workers are essential in a superior strain of bees. Also, large, industrious bees that can carry more nectar may add to the productivity. Some progress has been made through selection and breeding for resistance to American foulbrood. Improvements in resistance to this and other brood or adult diseases may be hoped for. A superior bee must not be nervous or inclined to sting without provocation, or prone to swarm. We have opportunities for breeding a bee for beauty of color or one for fine capping of the combs where fancy section honey is to be produced.

Selection for the desired characteristics among the extremely variable honeybee stock requires intensive inbreeding. Honeybees that have been closely inbred lose vigor rapidly and the viability of the queen's eggs decreases. Preliminary studies on the hybridization of inbred lines are suggestive that a program of breeding not unlike that used in the production of hybrid seed corn may be necessary. Two selected inbred lines may have to be combined to produce a hybrid queen to establish vigor for egg laying. The hybrid queens may be top-crossed with a third male line to produce double-hybrid worker progeny.

In 1945 the highest producing stock used was a double-hybrid line that averaged 266 pounds of surplus honey, but the bees were intolerably vicious. When sister queens of this line were top-crossed with another line of drone stock, the disposition of the workers was equal to the gentler strains of bees.

Bee breeding should gain momentum because of the opportunity for applying genetic principles worked out in other fields. The relatively short life of the breeding stock is a disadvantage, but it may be offset by the rapidity with which successive generations can be obtained.

Two-Queen Colonies

A practical way of increasing colony populations is through the use of two queens. By dividing a strong overwintered colony 5 to 7 weeks before the honey flow and introducing a young queen to the division, it is possible nearly to double the yield of honey. The colony is reunited to a single-queen status about a month before the end of the honey flow.

Between 1935 and 1945, 287 two-queen colonies averaged 270 pounds, with a mean maximum of 434 pounds. The yields obtained over a period of years indicate there is sufficient nectar available in most areas now supporting commercial beekeeping to permit first-class two-queen colonies to produce an average in excess of 400 pounds a year. This would be more than 10 times the national average yield.

Hive Equipment

The standard beehive of today is essentially like the original movable comb Langstroth hive developed in 1851. The size of the hive has been increased by adding more bodies of comb. The increased production obtained through the use of supplemental pollen feeding and improved queens or two queens has emphasized a need for hive equipment adaptable to intensive management. In the Intermountain States, where the work with two-queen colonies was started, satisfactory results were obtained by using 7-story hives. When the project was transferred to the Central States, the character of the honey flow in the more humid atmosphere there made it necessary to increase the hive capacity to 9 and 10 stories. Similar yields were obtained in both areas, but a need for a hive providing greater capacity nearer to the ground became a necessity.

Preliminary experiments, started in 1940 with a shallow type of hive, have demonstrated the opportunity for improving hive equipment. To be practical, any style of hive must use the same size of frame for both brood chambers and supers. A shallow-type square hive taking 12 frames 6 1/4 inches in depth has shown practical advantages. Besides reducing the height of the hive, it allows greater flexibility of manipulation for proper colony control. The full supers are easier to handle as they weigh 15 to 17 pounds less than the standard-depth supers. These are usually finished 7 to 10 days sooner than the standard-depth supers, so that honey can be extracted and the combs returned for refilling. Most colony manipulations can be made by interchanging the position of hive bodies instead of manipulating frames. The disadvantage of the shallow type of hive is its slightly greater cost because more frames are used. The added cost is offset by better colony control that favors increased production.

THE AUTHOR

C. L. Farrar, an apiculturist in the Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine, is in charge of the North Central States Bee Culture Laboratory, which is maintained in Madison by the Bureau and the University of Wisconsin. He is professor of apiculture in the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Farrar, a graduate of Kansas State College and Massachusetts State College, was associate apiculturist at the Intermountain States Bee Culture Laboratory from 1931 to 1938 and specializes in the behavior, development, and management of the honeybee colony, the causes of queen supersedure, and stock testing for honey production.