Undecided on Minn.Hygenic Queens

[brooksbeefarm]

I have had most every breed of bees offered in the US.They all have good traits and bad,but the one that irritates me most is ROBBING,if a honey flow is going on no problem, but during a dearth or drought year look out.I now have mostly carniolan bees and don!t have much or any robbing out of them.I still have a few italian bees in two of my bee yards and when a dearth is on you can!t even inspect the hives in those yards without starting robbing and when you rob your hives it can get bad in a hurry.I now use Bee Go in those yards ,I don!t like the smell but it works.I thought and was misinformed about the MHQ bees,I heard they were bred from the carniolan bees and were mite resistance.From my other thread I found they are italian + italian cross,and some beekeepers really like them and others don!t (say they are bad about robbing and not mite resistance) so where dose the hygenic come from?I want to thank all of you for your help and I don!t want you to think I!m talking down any certain breed of bees,I love them all.I guess I!m looking for the perfect breed of bees but it!s not out there yet!Jack

[vladimir86]

From Glenn-Apiaries.com (http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/minn.html):

"Minnesota Hygienic Italians were developed by Dr. Marla Spivak (http://www.entomology.umn.edu/Faculty/spivak/spivcv.htm) at the University of Minnesota Bee Lab (http://www.extension.umn.edu/honeybees/). These bees are bred to have a high degree of hygienic behavior known to be effective against diseases of the brood such as American foulbrood and chalkbrood."

So, simply put, this stock is of Italian origin bred for high hygienic behavior. I assume MHQ are not "pure" Italian, but the majority of their genetic makeup comes from the Italians, which is a race that has been cross-bred, inter-bred, and inbred for the propagation of desirable traits, therefore questioning the purity of this stock. But let's not be technical here and let's just say they're Italian.

Now, when talking about varroa mite resistance, hygienic behavior is perhaps not the key here as much as is Varroa Sensitive Hygiene, or VSH. VSH is important in detecting varroa in sealed brood cells, whereas hygienic behavior is more important in discovering diseased or dead brood. Concerning VSH, according to Glenn-Apiaries.com (http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/minn.html), "Dr. Spivak played a pivotal role in characterizing this behavior." So there are two key elements that contribute to varroa resistance: hygienic behavior and the VSH trait.

Luckily for you, hygienic behavior can be bred into any line of Apis Mellifera, so if you don't like the robbing Italians, get yourself some nice Carniolan queens and breed them for hygienic behavior using several methods. The U of M Bee Lab has a great free resource entitled "Testing for Hygienic Behavior (http://www.extension.umn.edu/honeybees/components/pdfs/posters/Poster%20162%20hyg%20test%208x11.pdf)."

With all the above said and done, at this point the closest race that comes to true Varroa resistance is the Russian line (http://www.russianbreeder.org/) bred by the USDA, which, interestingly, resembles the dark Carniolan line.

I personally have greatly enjoyed the Cordovan Italian line from C. F. Koehnen (http://www.koehnen.com/queens.html), and am looking forward to taking advantage of the Russian stock some time soon. Hope this helps!

[brooksbeefarm]

Vladimir86,Yes that answers some of my questions,Thanks.The russian bees I had from Kelly!s(probably not pure) were more prone to swarm and a little testy compared to my carniolans.The ones I had didn!t produce alot of extra stores and seemed like they had supercedure cells all the time? I try different breeds of bees and raise queens from them to keep new blood so to speak.I like and keep the black queens I raise but mine are all mutts.Just a little input.Jack

[RayMarler]

I've had 4 lines of bees here, Cordovan, MHI, Carni's, and VSH.
Cordovan is actually a color scheme that can be had by any genetic strain, and mine are Italian. My MHI and VSH are from Italian lines as well.
The Italian lines are more prone to robbing (although I've had Carni's become some of the worst robbers ever as well), are more apt to lay brood during a dearth, and less prone to swarming than the darker bees of Carniolans. At the end of the year, the Italians have brought in more honey than the darker bees as well.

[thomas]

Hello i have three hives ofminn.hygenics but one fail to start laying so i replaced her with one of my own queens but the other two are great to be around and work hard. They do tend to want to try to steal from the others but not as bad. They do build up good and the queens lay great i got mine from terry hester in GA. he is nice to talk with and his bees are good the only thing the third queen in te third package wa not laying and he wanted her back to see why she was not laying but i could not wait for him to replace her so thats when i put in my own carni x minn. hygenic cross and she is a great layer and put up alot of stores for the winter.

THOMAS

[tecumseh]

brooksbeefarm writes:
but the one that irritates me most is ROBBING,if a honey flow is going on no problem

tecumseh:
I have a seasonal problem with robbing... which really means when the migratory folks set down in the late fall the robbing will soon get out of hand.

after someone mentioned robbing screens (I think perhaps it was iddee????) I looked into their construction and this year I will try and employ some of those. an old article suggest that these would also tend to limit defensive/aggressive behavior in a yard of bees.

[Bud Dingler]

is a management problem or operator error

why would any strain of bee not want to eat?

[brooksbeefarm]

Bud Dingler, All races of bees have different traits that set them apart from each other,or their wouldn!t be different races.Some races are more prone to rob than others, like you stated on the mite resistant russian and VSH breeds in another post.I agree that some robbing is management and operator error, but you know feral hives have been robbing each other for hundreds of years without management or operator intervention.Jack