Bee Breeding Yard Number Confusion

[Bean]

Hello – My question is about the bee yards needed for queen rearing. I’ve read a number of excellent books, and informative posts on this and other sites, but I’m wondering if I’ve got the idea right (at times the concepts are expressed quite differently). So please, all corrections and comments are really appreciated:

There seems to be 3 concepts of bee yards for raising queens:

1) One yard is fine, as long as one adds new queen stock periodically. But one is reallyy depending on feral bees in the area and/or other people’s bees to supply the genetic diversity.

2) Have one main yard where the virgin queens are bred and reside, which is at the center of a circle with a 2-mile radius. Along that circle are 2 to 6 other yards. Each yard stocked with the same “race” of bees, but from different suppliers.

3) Have 3 or 4 yards each separated by more than 3 miles (and separated from any other bee yard as well). Each yard stocked with the same “race” of bees, but from different suppliers. Virgins from one yard are taken to another yard for breeding then returned to the original yard. One would seem to need 4 yards for this technique, to avoid inbreeding. Queen progeny from Group A queen bred with group B drones would need to be bred to group C drones, and their queen progeny would have to go to group D drones before their progeny could go back to Group B drones.

I’ve been doing a “let them raise their own queens” in the style of option 1. And am going to try queen rearing on a more “formal” basis this year. From what I’ve read, I’m probably losing bees to inbreeding – there’s only one other beekeeper up here and he’s about 2.5 miles away over a small mountain.

Option 2 is appealing, but I’ll never make a circle, because we’re in a river valley with mountains, and the “top” of the circle has no people, but lots of bear, and the bottom is a big river.

Option 3 seems really complicated for my minor needs (I have 20 hives and am working towards 30 by doing splits)

So any and all corrections and comments are really appreciated.

[RayMarler]

I have to work within my means...
That means I've got one yard, my back yard at the house here.

I have 4 strains of bees.

I raise queen cells off one strain while drone combs are in the other strains.

If I want queens from one of the other strains, I just change the drone combs in the hives and may raise queens from strain#2 with drones being raised from the other 3.

This is about all I can do in my situation and it seems to be working out just fine for me.

My 4 strains are: Carniolan, Cordovan, MHI and VSH

[Bean]

Thanks Ray - That makes sense...guess I was just getting it too complicated in my mind.

[bee_wrangler]

I just read 'Bee Sex Essentials' a good read for the new queen producer. It was suggested in that book that drone mother colonies placed 0.77 mikes away from the mating nucs had the best success. Now this year i had 80% success in mating with drone mother colonies 150yards away. I also had excellent weather conditions during that time. I have given thought about changing my mating yard configuration for next year. By placing drone mother colonies in a circle 0.5 mi. radius away from the mating nucs. I dont think it wuold be a perfect circle or always the same distance but i want only the strongest drones and queens to mate. And 150 yards away like i did this year while still successfull could be improved upon.

any thoughts???

Dan

[RayMarler]

I've read that book, BeeSex Essentials as well, it's a good book to read in my opinion. But, I'm fairly certain there are no, or at least extremely few hives withing 3 miles or more of me. If a queen goes out to mate and no DCA's are found 3/4 mile or more out, seems to me she'd still mate with drones from the local yard which would be in DCA's 1/2 mile or less out. After all, she has the urge to mate and so do the drones, so I doubt she'd be willing to come back on empty if there was any chance for her to mate at all.

[sierrabees]

I read some research, which of course I can't remember who it was by, where they suggested that queens tend to fly much further away from their home yards than the worker bees do. The figure six miles comes to mind. That doesn't mean that if they run into a DCA that is closer they won't be attracted to it, but it does suggest that it is more difficult than it appears to control the drone stock in an open breeding program. In many ways that may not be such a bad thing.

[adamf]

I read some research, which of course I can't remember who it was by, where they suggested that queens tend to fly much further away from their home yards than the worker bees do. The figure six miles comes to mind. That doesn't mean that if they run into a DCA that is closer they won't be attracted to it, but it does suggest that it is more difficult than it appears to control the drone stock in an open breeding program. In many ways that may not be such a bad thing.

I agree with sierrabees. However, to make progress in selecting (breeding) for specific types of bees: some control over matings are necessary. If one has the luxury, saturating an area greater than a six-mile radius and mating from the center would be the most optimum. How many colonies are needed for saturation?

I wrote Jennifer Berry at UGA: http://www.ent.uga.edu/bees/Research/breeding.htm and asked her how they saturated. I'll post what she answers.

Adam Finkelstein
www.vpqueenbees.com

[rainesridgefarm]

Queens will fly as far away from their own hives as possible before mating to prevent mating with their offspring. If you are raising queens you should worrie about what your queens are mating with. We do not give enought credit to what the drones add to the gene pool of a hive. You could be rasing great queens and have poor drone stock and have a hive that does not do what you want. Or worse just sits there. At Marla and Sue's classes they both said to circle the mating yard with drone mother hives .5-.75 miles away because no one is sure where the DCA is. But I do remember a 1 drone producing hive for every 10 queens you produce for good mating

[sc-bee]

I have read the articles about DCA's and distances drones should be from your mating yards etc.

I agree it is far above my experience level but heard a commercial queen breeder make the statement:

He had watched queens more than one time mate right above the hive she came from (or in the yard). Anyway you get the general jest of it.

[WG Bee Farm]

items to consider:

Approx 6000 drones need to be in the area where 100 queen bees are mating during the few days that mating takes place to ensure that each queen bee mated with a minimum of 12 drones.


4-10 drone mother colonies are required for each 100 mating nuclei. I have heard of people using 1 drone colony per 10 nucs

Drones need to be between 16 and 28 days of age for each queen mating

Most recommends drone mother hives to be located at approx 1-1.5 miles raduis around the mating yard. Remember you can not have to many DC.---(Think spokes of a wheel)

Larry Conner has talked several times about drones and DCA's. They can follow "lay of the land" and many other changes. Drones may even follow tree lines on their way to DCA's and may mate with queens before they get to the DCA

I try to keep my yards within 1 mile of each other so they can support eadh other and try to keep a min. of 5-6 drone producing hives @ each yard. With the additional beeks in the area I manage to have plenty of drones.


Frank Wyatt

[Jaseemtp]

OK, I know its diggin up an old thread but, I am looking at trying my hand at this at some point in the future. I am planning on keeping 10-15 hives at home. I now have access to three out yards that are 2 miles away. One east,north and south of me. I am planning on keeping 5 to 10 colonies at the out yards and will be either giving them drone comb or letting them keep the brood boxes foundationless. I figure the girls know better than I do about what they can handel. I am also talking with a rancher to the west of me but is about 2 1/2 miles out.
Does this sound like a good enough plan? Would I need to have more hives in the outyards? Are they to far away? I am wanting to keep bees with the cordovan color trait to help as an indicator of the riff raff the girls are running around with.

[KQ6AR]

It would improve the odds of the queen mating with you're drones. The queen flies farther from the hive to mate, than the drones do. This is to prevent inbreeding.
If I had drone colonies in my mating yards, the queens would rarely mate with the drones I was raising.

[RayMarler]

Keep drone comb in only the best hives in the outyards only, try to prevent drones in the other hives in the yards. You only want the drones from the best hives in the air. Keep your queen mother hives and mating nucs at home as it seems to be centrally located to the other yards, and of course the queen mother hives are your best hives over all hives. You'll have better success doing your queen rearing during honey flows. Get drone production started 2 weeks before you start the queen rearing so you'll have drones of the propper age when needed, and keep the drones producing all through your queen rearing.

[Adrian Quiney WI]

I have a copy of an old Scottish Beekeeping book where the Author describes an experiment in which the mini mating nucs were stocked with the desired drones. He claimed success with this method, and it seemed like a way of maximizing your drones' chances.

[Velbert]

Have a mating yard with my Drone colonies in out laying yards from 1 1/2 2 miles, placed in queen cells in a batch of Mating Nuc an about 4 days after hatch was checking and the nuc had no drones a few days before and when the queen was getting to the mature age for mating there was from about 10-15 drones in each nuc. Not for sure if the drones just come into the hive or might have followed the queen into it when she may have took her orientation flight.

[JD's Bees]

A good option for beekeepers with few resources or who don't have access to outyards would be to seek help from the neighbors. If there is a local club or beekeepers in the area that have similar goals in queen breeding then it would be a lot simpler to have each person provide a drone colony.

[KQ6AR]

I've also noticed an increase in drones when virgin queens are mating, I'm convinced some of the drones follow her home. Never seen it mentioned in an article or book.
My yard is very small, so I just try to raise good resistant drones to hopefully help my genetics within a couple years. I can take drone frames out of good hives, & install them in mediocre hives. Letting them raise the good drones.

I agree with JD if you're raising good queens give them to beekeepers who live around you for free, down the road it will help you're breeding efforts.

[Jaseemtp]

That is sort of my plan. I want to get some good bee genetics going and I am more than willing to have a few of the folks in the club try the queens out for me. That way if the girls are good they could help spread the genetics around the county. I do live in an area thats rual and even though I do not know of any near by bee keepers Im sure there are. I have a friend would did a removal from my neighborhood this year before I moved in, so I know there are bees out in the wood some where.

[NY_BLUES]

Queens will fly as far away from their own hives as possible before mating to prevent mating with their offspring.

Close... I think you ment siblings, if a virgin queen is out on mating flights, she has no offspring yet, just trying to clarify

[Michael Bush]

Everything about bee reproduction is stacked to maximize genetic diversity. It's hard to fight it and I'm afraid we are not doing ourselves any favors fighting it.

[David LaFerney]

Jaseempt - I certainly wouldn't imply that you don't need to worry about drones, but until you get some hands on doing everything else about right, you might not need to worry about it much.

It takes a while to build up the resources - bees, mating nucs, other specialized bits, time and understanding - to dedicate to producing more than a few queens at a time.

Sure, you could probably make up cell builder hives to start and finish 40 -50 cells, but do you have 40 mating nucs? Can you stock them with 40 frames of brood and 40 frames of food all at once? If you can, will you even have enough healthy hives left to manage for drones? Will you still be able to produce enough honey just to feed all of those colonies? Also, managing all of those little hives is probably more work than it sounds like.

I don't want to discourage anyone from raising queens, but unless you can bring to bear an awful lot of brute force in the form of time, money, and knowledge it will probably take a few years to get to the point where drones are the weakest link. For me it is anyway.

[Jaseemtp]

I appreciate it the feed back. David I completely understand what you are saying. This is not going to happen next year and doubtful it will happen the year after. Its just something that I have been thinking about and wondering if I could pull it off at some point later. As far as time I have plenty of that. I work 10 days a month so the other 20 days I like to tinker around. Currently I do not have the hive numbers or resources but I am wanting to increase the number I hives I have every year as long as the bees can help pay for it.

MB as far as not wanting or being able to get keep ferel or other genetics out, I know I cant keep em all out but we do have AHB here and anything I could do to lessen their impact on any queen I attempt to raise and mate is worth it.

[RayMarler]

Ahh, I see now, AHB's in Tx. Put a drone comb frame in every hive of your own. I know, queens fly further right? So what about the drones? They are accepted into any hive and they travel like a rich playboy. As far as I see it, they travel much further over time than the queen does on her flight, so she may just mate with 'junior' 5 miles away from home.

[peacekeeperapiaries]

We have AHB here in FL also, we breed our own queens and mate them in our yards. We put drone comb in many select hives and vary our genetics yearly with the purchase of breeder queens as well as selecting breeders from our present stock. As far as mating goes IMO you can place drone colonies all around your mating yards and you might increase the possiblity that your virgins will mate with the drone population you are putting out there but there is no certainty and unless you have the resources to actually FLOOD the area with your drones...and you would have to produce THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of drones.... its not worth the resources to place drone mother colonies around your breeding yards no matter how close or far. If your a small operator your better off putting the drone comb in select hives within your own yards and hope for the best while selecting your best queens to graft from or changing your genetics via purchased breeder queens on a routine basis.