Artificially Inseminated Breeder Queens: The most vital tool a queen rearer can own to leverage survival and productivity

Having a strong foundation of traits in your breeder stock allows you to build an apiary that will thrive

Before we get here, we need too start at the beginning by selecting our breeder queens

When a beekeeper asks what they will need to produce queens, they are given a list of what materials they are going to need. What is often neglected is the importance of genetic material. Stock selection criteria and the ability to produce artificially inseminated queens is paramount to providing that genetic material. You might be monetarily averse to purchase breeder stock. But the reality is that if you buy well vetted stock, it’s worth its weight in honey. I have spent years selecting for traits specific to varroa resistance and overwintering success in a northern climate. Thanks to the knowledge I have gained working in a honey bee research lab along with collaborators at the USDA, professional beekeepers and other researchers knowledgeable in the field of honey bee artificial insemination I am very confident in the stock I have created.

Our experience

The genetic bottleneck of WI winter

The stock I have created is VSH (varroa sensitive hygiene) that thrives in our northern climate. VSH was first identified as a promising varroa resistance behavior by John Harbo at the USDA Honey Bee Research lab in the late 1990s. VSH colonies that express this trait at a high level, will require fewer or no treatments against varroa mites during the season. We have seen this firsthand in our yards. About 75% of the colonies we manage require no treatment at any point in the season. While they may not require mite treatment from us, we do still manage them and monitor varroa levels. Another benefit of our stock is that they are capable of surviving northern winters. Since we force all our colonies to go through the genetic bottleneck of overwintering outdoors in WI, we can be confident our stock is a good fit for beekeepers in a northern climate. Our overwintering survival is between 80%-90%. We find this to be a benchmark of our successful breeding program. By focusing our effort on trait selection instead of race, we have created a stock that benefits from casting a wide net of genetics instead of focusing on a bee defined by exhausted definitions and genotyping. When you are looking to acquire a breeder queen from a producer, keep in mind what kind of goals you have for the stock you want to keep. Their selection and previous success will be the foundation that your apiary is built on.

Let someone do the heavy lifting for you

There are several reasons why you need an AI (artificially inseminated) breeder queen in your queen rearing program. One of the biggest reasons that comes to mind is having someone to do the heavy lifting of stock selection for you. Stock selection can be difficult for folks that run a smaller apiary because they don’t have the number of colonies required to see the diversity. On the other hand, if you run a thousand or more colonies, finding the time and labor to perform proper stock selection can also be extremely limiting. So, the best tradeoff is to have someone who sits between these two to do your selection for you. Having someone who is dedicated to the task of selection allows you to make a call and receive reliable genetic material. This is a genetic lifeline to your operation. You need to be able to trust the operation you get your stock from that they can provide this service for you.

Consistency and selection

Our yearly selection of overwintered breeders via Dr. Harbo's VSH assay

The reason why we focus so much of our efforts on the production of AI queens is that they can produce very consistent stock. That consistency comes from not only the selection of the queen, but also the selection of the drones. While open mated breeders can be a viable option, AI breeders offer a more consistent product to graft from. Daughters produced from these AI breeder will be more consistent with proper drone selection. You will see the difference between this in your yards when you do inspections. The two easiest traits to identify are temperament and productivity. These should be more uniform when an AI queen is used to produce daughter stock.

Every season we wash all the colonies in the operation to start the process of identifying potential breeders.

There are somethings that you definitely need to consider before taking on the use of any breeder stock. A big part of this is that bee breeding with resistance to mites and other favorable traits is a war, not a battle. You can’t claim victory after the first year. Constant selection is needed to keep selected traits in a population. That means that you can’t just buy an AI queen from someone and think you are set for a lifetime. You will need to keep purchasing breeder queens over the years to keep the traits you want in your population. If you start grafting off of open mated daughters of your breeders without doing the same selection process as the person that provided the initial AI queen, you will be dissatisfied with the results. Any selected trait can be washed out of a population if a proper selection program is not put in place to retain those ideal traits. The easiest way to look at this is that purchasing a breeder queen isn’t a one-shot deal. You are committing to years of work.

Redundancy is key

Take a lesson from the bees, redundancy is key to survival.

We only offer our AI queens with a minimum of a two queen shipment. The reason for this is that we want you to be successful. Things can happen during the season to your breeder colony like supercedure, swarming or accidents that result in a short-lived breeder queen. By always having a backup, you can continue grafting for the season. This also spreads the risk out for overwintering your AI breeder. We have heard of folks separating their AI breeders amongst friends to put another failsafe in place if tragedy strikes your bee yard. We are firm believers that redundancy is the key to successful beekeeping.