Getting queens - what does this mean to genetics?

[Seymore]

Muddy thoughts....

A. When I bring in my Buckfast mated queens, the assumption is that all the offspring will be Buckfast, yes?

B. So the queen will not mate again?

C. If I create a split from an existing Italian hive, I get a queen who will need to mate. She could then possibly mate with drones from my Buckfast hive, yes?

D. Creating 50/50 Buckfast/Italian.

E. But the reality is I have no idea what she will mate with, so I truly have no clue what kind of bees I will end up with, yes?

F. Inbreeding would be splits of one hive mating with its own drones. How likely is this and is it of great concern? And do I have any options other than always buying my queens?

Thanks!

[AmericasBeekeeper]

A Buckfast queen artificially inseminated with Buckfast drones is Buckfast.
A Buckfast queen open mated with drone saturation from Buckfast hives about a quarter mile from the queen's hive is possibly Buckfast.
Most researchers say the queen only mates once. If the first day mating is unsuccessful, does she try again? It is pretty certain as soon as she is loaded with semen and her ovarioles start swelling and maturing, she will not fly again except to swarm.
Bees will not inbreed naturally. She will not breed with her own hive. That is why drone colonies are placed away from the breeding queen. She will outfly her brothers. If your colonies are not spread over a couple acres, and you do not live on an island with no trees or places bees live, you will get mut bees, which really is not a bad thing since they are "survivor stock" without man intervening with our opinions of what a bee should be.

[NCSUbeeKEEPER]

Mated queens that you purchase have already proven to be layers. Once queens start to lay they never mate again. A mated buckfast queen will only produce buckfast bees.

Drones jump from colony to colony. Many people don't know this. I wouldn't necessarily worry about inbreeding in your area as there should be an adequate pool of viable mates. Queens have been successfully mating in the wild for thousands of years. The only way to guarantee your genetics is to purchase your queens from a reputable supplier. And actually this turns out sometimes to be no guarantee.

[Seymore]

Excellent! Thanks for clarifying!!

[sqkcrk]

E. But the reality is I have no idea what she will mate with, so I truly have no clue what kind of bees I will end up with, yes?

F. Inbreeding would be splits of one hive mating with its own drones. How likely is this and is it of great concern? And do I have any options other than always buying my queens?

Thanks!

Yes, that's right. If you make up a split to raise its own queen, the virgin queen will mate w/ what ever drones there are in the Drone Congregation Area. But, the likelihood of the queen mating w/ her brother drones is not too awfully great, because Queens fly farther than Drones from the same colony when out on mating flights, from what I have heard.

[scdw43]

They are all mutts, a pure bred queen is marketing hype.

[Michael Bush]

>A. When I bring in my Buckfast mated queens, the assumption is that all the offspring will be Buckfast, yes?

No one knows what she mated with. So, no. They will not all be Buckfast, but assuming they saturated the area with Buckfast drones they will be mostly Buckfast.

>B. So the queen will not mate again?

Correct.

>C. If I create a split from an existing Italian hive, I get a queen who will need to mate. She could then possibly mate with drones from my Buckfast hive, yes?

Possibly. Probably will mate with some of them. But you never know.

>D. Creating 50/50 Buckfast/Italian.

Creating mutts which is what they all are.

>E. But the reality is I have no idea what she will mate with, so I truly have no clue what kind of bees I will end up with, yes?

Yes. You have no clue. We have no clue. The queen and drones will do as they please.

>F. Inbreeding would be splits of one hive mating with its own drones. How likely is this and is it of great concern?

I've never had an issue with it. If they are inbred the result is shotgun brood patterns. Then it's time to requeen.

> And do I have any options other than always buying my queens?

Of course you do.

http://bushfarms.com/beesqueenrearing.htm
http://bushfarms.com/beesafewgoodqueens.htm

[heaflaw]

Queens mate with somewhere, hopefully, around 15 to 20 drones on their mating flights. If a queen mates with one or more of her own drone progeny, the nurse bees can detect that larvae and will remove it creating the shotgun brood pattern MB refered to.

If you think there are good drones around that your queen will mate with, your new queens from supercedure or swarming will be good. Many beeks consider feral bees as often providing good drones because they have been surviving without treatments. But, will they produce a lot of honey or be gentle, etc? And your new queens will breed with drones from neighbor beeks, too. It's luck and complicated: but most hobbyists don't seem to buy queens every year-they just let queens mate with whatever is around. Also, the drones from your hives will mate with feral bees and neighbor's bees, thereby spreading genetics from your colonies to the local population which will come back to you in years to come.