controlled mating

[brent.roberts]

It seems to me that the wild card in queens is what drones she mates with. Without going to the trouble of artificial insemination, or a remote island, what else can be done?

Could you put up a big picknick tent with mosquito neeting for a few days when you expect she wants to mate?

Would in-breeding become a problem?

I guess you would have to have a ton of feeding available or the whole colony would go beserk.

Anyone tried anything crazy like this ?

[ April 19, 2006, 10:48 AM: Message edited by: brent.roberts ]

[NW IN Beekeeper]

US Patent Office #5,158,497 Oct 27, 1992
Inventor Phillipe A. Rossignol

Abstract:
An enclosure for the controlling of honey bees has a diffusely illuminated upper dome section.

I've not seen Phillipe in any top financial magazine articles, I don't suppose it works too well.
---------------------------------------------

From what I have read all throughout time people have tried all sorts of cages of varying sizes, and nothing seems to work.

Instrumental Insemination seems to be the only successful mathod, but even it has trade offs - these you can read about in length if you search the past forum posts.

Sometimes, wild cards aren't as bad as they first might seem.

[brent.roberts]

So it's not an original idea.

I've been looking at the insemination tools and while it intrigues me, the investment in close to $2000 is a bit much.

I have some Russian pure line queens coming and I'm quite sure there are none in the area that new queens I breed could find and mate with. In fact there were almost no bees around here until I got mine. Dandelions had no honeybee visitors the first 2 years we were here.

So if I rear some queens, there's no way to know what the next generation will be.

I guess $ 2000 will by pure queens of any line for a lot of years for a small apiary.

[tarheit]

Similar attempts have been made in large cages, greenhouses, etc. I've seen some old pictures where a 30-40 foot tall cage was used (can't remember the date of the picture, but was easily more than 50 years ago). I believe all attempts were failures. The large greenhouse did have a few partial matings, but nothing worthwhile. You would probably need an enclosure the size of the super dome to have success (A bit more expensive than II equipment.)

I would plan more on $3000 to $3500 by the time you buy the equipment, good microscope, harbo syringe, ruby sting hook, CO2 equipment and other supplies. The basic setup with fixed x20 microscope is about $2000, but the zoom is really helpful and everyone I took the class Sue offers that didn't get the harbo ordered one by the end of class.

There is a somewhat cheaper option (though not if you do a lot of them). You can send your drones and virgins to someone that will do the II. Ohio Queen Breeders will do this for $75 per queen.

-Tim