Last night I was sitting beside my nuc on my patio wathing the bees coming and going, this helps me think and come up with different ideas.
The one I came up with last night was about breeding a queen that you would otherwise not have until the distant future. these are my thoughts...
The first step would be to select the lucky mama that you would start with.
The second step would be to rear daughters from her. I'd say about 20 or so to allow for ones that wouldn't get mated and also for some selectivness.
The third step would be to select the better queen (hard to do since she has just started laying, but...)and breed off of her another 20 queens. Then repeat this step again. In our location we could probably be able to do this 5 times through the season.
another thing is drone stock. It will be impossible to use drones from a closer generation to the current queens you would be raising but even setting up some drone mother from the third generation queens of that year in an isolated yard to mate up the fifth generation(last generation for that year) will at least keep the generation gap of drones and queens smaller.
The following year you could continue with the last queens you had reared.
Assuming that the average queen lives 3 years (naturally), 5 generations would be like a 15 year jump into the future and ant the end of 2 years would be like 30 years. For those of us the requeen every year with our own stock it would be like a 5 year leap into the future or at the end of year 2, 10 years.
keeping the drone stocks updated in isolated mating yards would be important. A queen could be chosen at anytime for back breeding. I could be possible to breed a queen with drones going 15 generations back.
How practical could this be. who knows? but it would be fun and certianly intresting to see what could come out of them.
The one I came up with last night was about breeding a queen that you would otherwise not have until the distant future. these are my thoughts...
The first step would be to select the lucky mama that you would start with.
The second step would be to rear daughters from her. I'd say about 20 or so to allow for ones that wouldn't get mated and also for some selectivness.
The third step would be to select the better queen (hard to do since she has just started laying, but...)and breed off of her another 20 queens. Then repeat this step again. In our location we could probably be able to do this 5 times through the season.
another thing is drone stock. It will be impossible to use drones from a closer generation to the current queens you would be raising but even setting up some drone mother from the third generation queens of that year in an isolated yard to mate up the fifth generation(last generation for that year) will at least keep the generation gap of drones and queens smaller.
The following year you could continue with the last queens you had reared.
Assuming that the average queen lives 3 years (naturally), 5 generations would be like a 15 year jump into the future and ant the end of 2 years would be like 30 years. For those of us the requeen every year with our own stock it would be like a 5 year leap into the future or at the end of year 2, 10 years.
keeping the drone stocks updated in isolated mating yards would be important. A queen could be chosen at anytime for back breeding. I could be possible to breed a queen with drones going 15 generations back.
How practical could this be. who knows? but it would be fun and certianly intresting to see what could come out of them.