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Breeding Feral Bees for Specific Enviroments

5K views 36 replies 10 participants last post by  naturebee 
#1 ·
Evening fellows!

How do those of you that have move to captured feral swarms manage them? What are the culling procedures? How ruthless is the cull? Do you ever use commercial bloodlines or is there an 'Underground Feral Railroad' to exchange bloodlines?

Kinda curious...

One of my earlier incarnations was as a microbiologist with an interest in genetics. And my aquisition of bees has sparked a resurgence in that field and a specific interest in the adaptation to a specific enviroment.

Thanks,
Albert
 
#27 ·
JBJ,

Physical size of the bees is smaller than commercial stocks. Overall traits and adaptations are similar to Italian but with modifications. I will describe averages but please remember that some colonies are significantly different. I only have 3 colonies of these bees at present so there is not much of a basis to draw conclusions.

Behavior is very calm. There is little to no running on the comb. I routinely open these bees with no more than 2 or 3 puffs of smoke.

Honey gathering is excellent and honey color is light. Its routine for an early swarm to make 2 shallow supers of light colored honey. This area has lots of plants that produce dark honey or honeydew so its very important to have bees that produce light colored honey.

In all of my commercial stocks, I can remove brood frames and easily count varroa on the bees. I can also pull sealed drone brood and find numerous mites. With the feral bees, I have not found a single mite sealed in the brood. I have not been able to find a single mite on the adult bees, but I also have not done anything serious like an ether roll to find them so this is based only on visual observation. I have these bees in an apiary that is infested with varroa. The bees are derived from Buckfast and Carniolan stock. The ferals are not from that immediate area, they originate about 10 miles to the west. When I remove mites from other colonies and place them in the feral colonies, the bees respond with a great deal of agitation. I have not been able to find any mites 24 hours later. This does not mean they don't exist, just means that I can't observe any on the bees or in the brood.

The ferals do not have a huge winter cluster like Italians. They are about midway between Buckfast (which usually have 2 or 3 frames of bees at this time of year) and Italian which typically cover 6 to 8 frames in December. I'm not sure if this is significant, just reporting what I see.

I'll be busy raising queens and splitting the few feral colonies I have next spring. I hope to cross these ferals with drones from the Purvis queens I bought in July.

Fusion
 
#28 ·
Pcolar,

"IMO, an experienced beekeeper needs no genetic analysis to make a reasonable assessment of the linage of a line of bees."

The devil is in the details. Phenotype does not always reflect genotype. The only way to know for sure would be through genetic analysis. That is the precise reason I make no claims to the actual type or lineage of queens we market. The only thing I know for sure are the genetics of the breeders that were purchased initially, the locations the ferals that were caught, and that the queen mothers and daughters that have exhibited survivor abilities without acaricide since 2000. Open mating can be a crapshoot. I am sure there has been hybridization, but the phenotype of many of my favorites has not changed substantially. Sometimes there is a lot of uniformity in daughters and in other years there seems to be more variability. We just got an II set up which will make maintenance of separate lines easier. We are also going back to some isolated mating yards that we used to use in the late 90s, which may make drone saturation strategies more feasible.

Dr Sheppard and Meixner at WSU have done some extensive analysis of honeybee genetics and are often willing to exchange breeders; perhaps they may be a good start for the documentation you are looking for. So am I to assume the queens available on your website are not daughters of these groomers? Why are you hesitant to produce them for sale?

Allogrooming in bees is fairly well documented in studies of resistant lines of bees. The first studies where I have seen this term used was in reference to tracheal mites, but has been observed with some bees dealing with Varroa. It is essentially group grooming type of behavior where a bee with a phoretic mite (or other material) on it can solicit a grooming response from its cohorts. I believe allogrooming has been observed in Russians, Buckfasts and AHB.
JBJ
 
#29 ·
--very interesting comment pcolar about allogrooming. the term sounds a bit technical.... is this similar to social grooming?--(Tecumseh)

Hello Tecumseh!

Yes!
Allogrooming is when one or several bees grooms another.
And autogrooming is when a bee grooms her self.

--in regards to the feral in your area pcolar I would think there would be a good proportion of german black bees (danish) in your area... since this was a fairly dominant breed used by hobbist (or at least it was the most common breed that I encounted during my very early bee keeping days in the western applachian mountains).--(Tecumseh)

I suppose it is possible. The bees look like dark Italians, but there could be some mix in there some where.

A friend offered to morph my bees for me a few years back. I may take him up on that offer.
 
#30 ·
--So am I to assume the queens available on your website are not daughters of these groomers? Why are you hesitant to produce them for sale?--(JBJ)

Yes they are. But what made me hesitant to sell them out without documentation is that once in the hands of a breeder, it becomes a trait that “they” developed, and they never heard of “that guy” in Pennsylvania.

Also:
1, that the behavior is so very intense.
2. the behavior simply does not match Seeleys description of an invitation dance prompting the allogrooming.
3. An invitation dance is conspicuously absent in these bees.
4. The groomers in their actions are without a doubt, on patrol seeking bees to groom, grooming one bee and leaving that bee to groom another, seeking and grooming.
5. the location that the grooming seems to occur at the parameters of the nest and entrance area, not in the nest area as others have stated it occurs.
6. By the absence of grooming in the nest interior and location of the grooming, I’m assuming this trait becomes prominent in these bees at the same time or around the age that they become guard bees.
 
#31 ·
[BTW, averages about 50% culling in the first 18 weeks and makes me a bad beekeeper I guess.]

Bad? Um maybe not, aggressive might be the more polite way we might say it among friends [smile].
{ambitious? - yeah that works too.)

Joe you have had such a significant contributions to this and other forums that I'd be nothing short of disrespectful to knock your methods. I respect you do what you believe is correct, and whether I agree or not is solely my problem to sort out in during my beekeeping career.

The concept I was trying to convey is that there are different focus between beekeepers and that there are different focus between bee colonies. A lot of this plays on genetics and until we have an absolute solid grasp on what characteristics are dominant or recessive, know how genes interact, and strickly AI our queens, every mating is a craps shot toss of the dice. (though less so the more we learn and explore the better our odds.)

Sometimes I think folks cull because their primary goal isn't met (not gentle enough) and I think there is often an secondary impact(s) (too gentle could equal less vigor) an unrecognized idea.
Every cull and cross has its trade off(s).
I know, I don't know enough, to be culling anything (yet).

At this point I'm just borrowing God's bee's and he's not given me any authority to dispose of any yet. (Doesn't mean I haven't needed to repent for some bad splits I lost - ouch.) Live and learn.

Whats enjoyable is none of us are intentionally malice (there might be a few trouble makers - ya know who you are!) All-in-all we can have this deeper conversation without a 'tail-gater fight'.
Thats how we bring value to this forum.

[...can solicit a grooming response from its cohorts.] -JBJ

Some have also documented better self-grooming with the middle set of legs which dislodges mites. Both amount to better mite drops. This grooming response is an acculative genetic trait (queens with it mated with drones with it intensify the probability that offspring will also have it.) However cross breeding can quickly diminish it. I could be hesitant to sell SMR or hygenic titled bees just because your image as a queen rearer could be harmed by other beekeepers practices of open mating (resulting in less hygenic/smr bees).
People always have inflated expecations (and beekeepers are even worse!)

-jeff
 
#32 ·
It is truly a pleasure to engage in such apicultural discussions. This forum is an incredible asset to the bee community. A great place to share opinions and exchange facts. Beekeeping will be the better for it all. Sometimes there will be differences of opinion and "facts" may be debatable, but what better place to have the discussion? Could this possibly be a great place for peer review of scientific work?

Joe, I think it would be a great service to the industry if you were to follow up with deeper analysis of the genetics of these groomer bees. This information would be handy for helping identify other stocks of bees that may be beneficial to bees and their keepers (sometimes I wonder who is keeping who).
JBJ
 
#34 ·
<At this point I'm just borrowing God's bee's and he's not given me any authority to dispose of any yet.>

If we ever get past this point, we should be able to really mess up the beekeeping industry forever and even possably destroy the honeybee as a species. People have shown the ability to do that in a lot of other areas.
 
#35 ·
This discussion is another reason why any beekeeper serious about breeding bees and selecting for certain traits should install Observation hives. At the moment I have two. I will be putting in more. The knowledge obtained is vastly superior to monitoring bees within standard hives.

The details that Joe explains can be seen in observation hives, and harder to observe in disturbed/opened hives. The first time you see a bee beg for grooming, or a bee seeking out mites to groom off other bees really makes you think that there is hope against the mites in a natural way.
 
#36 ·
Hey fellows,
JW:
Would you please define "Allogrooming".

Thanks,
Albert

PS: Gosh, I really have to brush up on my biology and and genetics. Its been over twenty years and I'm loving the discussion!
 
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