CATDOLL : CATDOLL: How to cultivate a good queen bee?

How to cultivate a good queen bee?

1. Time and conditions: warm weather and stable climate. During the queen bee mating period, the daytime temperature should be above 20℃ and continuous rainy weather should be avoided.

2. During the queen raising period, there must be a good source of honey and pollen in nature, and sufficient pollen sources are more important. Every evening, the breeding bees and the breeding king will be rewarded and continuously fed.

3. Before artificial breeding, the following preparations need to be done carefully: Select parent bee colonies: Through investigation, select healthy and disease-free bees whose honey or royal jelly production exceeds the average production of the entire farm, with weak swarming ability and fast colony development.

4. Use the mother colony to breed drones, and use the mother colony larvae to breed queen bees. The quantity and quality of breeding drones are directly related to the mating success rate of queen bees in various places, as well as the fertilization effect, thus affecting the quality of the offspring bee colony.

5. Prepare breeding king colonies. Breeding king colonies are strong colonies used to feed queen bee larvae and pupae. Disease-free, bee-mite-free, colony-potential-rich, and at least 15 bees should be selected as breeding colonies.

6. Tools for pest control and queen rearing. Tools for pest control and queen rearing include pest control needles, queen rearing racks, wax bowls, etc. The pest control needle is a tool for transplanting small larvae into the queen bowl. It can be made of thick copper wire or goose feather tube, with a flat and thin tongue at one end and a curved spoon at the other end. The pest control needle with a spring is easy to use.

7. Insect transfer method: Insect transfer can systematically cultivate the required number of queens of the same maturity. First, stick 2 to 3 layers of nest foundation strips or small triangular thin iron sheets of melted wax at equal distances on the slats of the queen raising frame, and stick 7 to 10 wax bowls on them, 3 wax bowls for a total of 20 to 30.

As the saying goes, "A good queen bee is worth a thousand pounds of honey." Although this is a bit exaggerated, it is enough to illustrate the role of the queen bee in the bee colony. However, it is not easy to get a good queen bee. The following is an explanation of my experience in queen bee breeding in beekeeping management over the past ten years.

First, we should choose bee species suitable for the local area to breed queens. We can introduce species from regular bee breeding farms, or we can select and transfer the best bee species from our farms for breeding. It is best to introduce queen bees from other places every two years to avoid the degradation of species.

Second, having a good queen bee does not necessarily mean that a good queen can be bred. There must also be a good or auxiliary source of nectar and pollen, which is another major condition for breeding a good queen. If the external nectar and pollen conditions are poor, the queen cannot be bred. When the nectar and pollen source conditions are average, reward feeding should be carried out every evening. Having the above two conditions is not enough. Large eggs must also be used to breed queens. Queens bred from large eggs are large in birth weight and well developed. How to get large eggs? First, the queen bee should be imprisoned in a bamboo wire cage for 5D10 days. 4 to 5 days before the transfer of insects, the queen bee is released to start laying eggs. The eggs laid within 4 days after the queen is released are relatively large in size and weight, and gradually become smaller as the amount of eggs laid increases.

3. Choose a strong colony to raise queens. Strong colonies have better conditions in all aspects. It is best to raise queens in a colony with more than 12 frames of bees, sufficient honey and pollen in the nest, and a queen. Confine the original queen in the nest box, select 1 to 2 small larval combs, first place the queen raising frame with the queen cell between the two larval combs and clean them for 4 to 6 hours, take out and transfer in 2-day-old small larvae to encourage them to accept, as long as they can accept a few. Take it out after 24 hours, remove the larvae, use a brush to brush each royal jelly that needs to be transferred, and then transfer in suitable small larvae within 12 hours. If the virgin queen comes out of the cell on the 11th day after the transfer, the quality will not be very good. Only the one that comes out of the cell in the afternoon or at night on the 12th day is the best virgin queen.

4. Organize a mating group, preferably 1 to 2 frames of bees, with sufficient honey and pollen. A large group will waste the feeding power of worker bees, which is not good for the development and production of the whole farm. One day before the virgin queen leaves the cell, place the queen cell in the place where there is honey in the mating group. If the virgin queen has residual limbs or is smaller after leaving the cell, she should be eliminated immediately. Virgin queens usually mate and lay eggs on the 9th to 11th day after leaving the cell. Some virgin queens that mate for more than half a month should also be eliminated. After the virgin queen starts laying eggs, whether she is a good queen depends on her performance after laying eggs.

5. Whether it is a good king or not depends on its performance in all aspects after laying eggs. In the mating group, after laying a full comb of eggs, it should be immediately exchanged with an empty comb in the strong group. After laying 4 combs of eggs in a row, it should be lured into the production group for further performance inspection. In the production group, the egg laying, honey production, nectar production, pollen production, etc. are not lower than the production of the same group, or even higher. This new king can be determined as a good king.

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How to raise queen bees in autumn, what should be paid attention to, and what tools are needed.

Notice

The inspector stands beside the beehive and moves gently when inspecting the bee colony. If there is propolis stuck, use a scraper to pry it gently before proceeding. The method of lifting the honeycomb to inspect the bee colony is to pinch the left and right frame ears with both hands, gently lift the beehive vertically, and check the bees on the front. If you want to see the other side, use both hands to rotate 90 degrees along the plane of the honeycomb, with one hand on top and the other hand on the bottom. After rotating 180 degrees with the frame beam as the axis, use both hands to rotate back 90 degrees along the plane of the honeycomb. At this time, the whole honeycomb is turned to the top of the frame beam. This operation is mainly to prevent the honey in the nest from flowing out and the pollen from falling out.

During the breeding season, it is usually sufficient to check once a week, but in the summer, check once every 3-4 days. If there is a lack of nectar sources, inspections should be reduced or checked earlier or later in the morning to avoid bee theft.

1. Comprehensive inspection: Check each frame in the bee colony and carefully understand the overall situation of the colony, including the honeycomb, bees, brood, queen bee, and whether there is any disease. During the swarming season, check whether there are any queen cells. If there are any problems, deal with them immediately and keep records.

2. Local inspection: This is to understand a certain specific situation of the bee colony, mainly to save time and disturb the bee colony less. For example, if there is enough feed, you can remove the capped honey from the two corners of the side or third comb, which means that the stored honey is sufficient for a short period of time; white new wax appears on the frame beam and the upper part of the honeycomb, indicating that there is a honey source outside, and you can consider adding combs or supers; the cover cloth and the side combs are full of bees, indicating that you can add combs (but the bees are denser in early spring, so it depends on the specific treatment). Otherwise, if there are too few bees, you should consider removing the combs.

3. Observation outside the hive: There are broken bee corpses and wax residues in the hive and at the entrance of the hive of the overwintering bee colony, indicating that there are rats in the hive and the hive needs to be opened for treatment; in the late winter, bees keep flying out or crawling in and out, there are many dead bees in front of the hive entrance with shrunken abdomens, protruding beaks, and the beehive is very light, indicating that there is a lack of feed in the hive; there are a large number of dead bees in front of the hive entrance, with spread wings, protruding beaks, and curved abdomens. Most of them are forage bees, which is a symptom of poisoning; in early spring, when bees excrete, there are brown-black feces everywhere near the hive entrance, indicating that Symptoms of diarrhea in the bee colony; small and weak bees with broken wings are constantly found in front of the nest entrance, indicating the infestation of mites; during the swarming season, few bees go out to collect nectar, but "beards" are formed in front of the nest entrance, and some bees are biting the nest entrance, indicating that the bee colony is preparing for natural swarming; when the nectar source is scarce, there will be a fight in front of the nest entrance, the abdomen of the bees entering the nest is small, and the abdomen of the bees leaving the nest is large, which is a sign of bee theft; the weather is sunny and warm, and after noon there are dozens of young bees spinning and flying in front of the hive, which is the young bees testing flight.

2. The merging of bee colonies

If a bee colony is too weak or loses its queen due to some reasons, it is necessary to merge two or more bee colonies into a large colony. A strong colony is the basis for high yields. Before the honey-collecting season, the merger method is also adopted to organize strong colonies for honey collection.

1. Principles of merging bee colonies

Queenless colonies are merged into queen colonies, small colonies are merged into large colonies, and if there are two queen colonies, the queen bee of poor quality is caught the day before and then merged. It is generally safer to merge in the evening.

2. Methods for merging bee colonies

A. Direct merging: mainly during the honey flow period, when the strong honey smell is the same in all bee colonies, and the bees are busy working and relax their vigilance, so it is easy to merge successfully. It is also easy to merge bee colonies that have just moved out of the wintering room in early spring.

Move the honeycomb with the queen colony to one side of the box, and place the honeycomb to be merged on the other side, leaving a frame of space between the two parts of the honeycomb or inserting a partition board in the middle. Spray some smoke or honey water when merging. The next day, move the two parts of the honeycomb together.

B. Indirect merging: Place a newspaper with many small holes on the queen nest box, add an empty super, put the honeycomb to be merged into the super, and cover it with the cover cloth, sub-cover, and box cover. When the two groups of bees bite through the newspaper and interact with each other, you can adjust the honeycomb. In hot summer, pay attention to ventilation of the super.

3. Induction of the Queen Bee

When the queen bee of a bee colony is aging, lost, or replaced with a superior queen, or when a new bee colony is organized, a queen bee should be lured in. Worker bees can recognize unfamiliar queen bees and will be attacked, so safety must be ensured when luring in a queen bee. When replacing a queen bee, first remove the eliminated queen bee or the queenless colony, and destroy the queen cell before luring in a queen bee. It is best to reward and feed the lured bee colony two days before luring in a queen bee, and do not rush to open the box for inspection after luring in a queen bee.

1. Indirect luring: Put the queen bee's comb with some stored honey on it into the full-frame luring device, close the upper cover, and put it into the queenless colony. After 3-4 days, scatter the luring device. Alternatively, you can put the queen bee and several young bees into a safe luring device, place it on the brood comb where there is some honey, pull out the bottom plate and buckle it on the comb. After 2-3 days, there will be no bees tightly surrounding the device, and there will be bees feeding the queen bee, then you can release the queen bee.

2. Directly lure in: In the evening during the heavy honey flow, spray a little honey water on the queen bee and slowly place it in front of the nest door or on the frame beam of the queenless colony. You can also take out two frames of bees from the queenless colony and shake them in front of the nest, and put the queen bee in the middle of the bees and crawl into the hive together.

3. Rescue of the bee encirclement: After the queen bee is lured in or due to other reasons, if the bees are in disorder from outside the hive, the hive should be opened for inspection immediately. If a bee mass is seen, the queen bee is encircled. The bee mass can be placed in water to force the bees to disperse, and the queen bee can be caught for inspection. If there is no injury, the queen bee can be re-lured with a safety luring device. Otherwise, the queen bee will be eliminated.

4. Construction of honeycomb

1. Nest foundation frame: Punch 4 equally spaced small holes on the center line of the two side bars of the nest frame, and cross 4 25-26 thin iron wires. Pull the two ends very tightly and fix them with small nails. The top of the nest foundation should be inserted into the frame groove of the upper beam, and the groove should be filled with wax. Then put it on the nest foundation wire embedding board, and use gear wire embedding to embed the frame wire into the nest foundation. The nest foundation wire embedding board is a thick board slightly smaller than the inner circumference of the nest frame (about 15 mm thick), and a 152×5 mm wooden strip is nailed horizontally at both ends below.

2. Repair and store honeycombs: Generally, during the swarming season, the nest frames with the nest foundation installed are placed in the newly separated bee colony to build honeycombs. As long as the average temperature is around 15℃ and the nectar source conditions are good, honeycombs can also be built in other seasons. The built honeycombs must be well stored, otherwise they are easily destroyed by nest insects or attract bee robbers. Nest insects are most likely to occur, and carbon disulfide, glacial acetic acid and sulfur can be used for fumigation.

5. Feeding of bee colonies

In order to speed up the development of bee colonies, produce more royal jelly and feed when there is insufficient feed in the hive, people usually feed wintering feed before wintering.

1. Feeding honey or sugar

A. Supplementary feeding: In early spring, overwintering, and long-term rainy weather, bees cannot leave the nest to collect food, resulting in insufficient feed consumption. A large amount of feeding is required in a short period of time. Thick feed should be fed, that is, 4 parts honey plus 1 part boiling water or 2 parts white sugar plus 1 part water, and melted over a low fire.

B. Reward feeding: During the spring breeding season, before the big honey flow period and in autumn to cultivate overwintering bees, it is necessary to feed a small amount of reward feeding to stimulate the queen bee to lay eggs. Feed with thin and thick feed, that is, 1 part honey plus 1 part boiled water or 1 part white sugar plus 2 parts water, stir and dissolve.

C. Honey and pollen mixed feeding: When producing royal jelly and building honeycombs, 10 parts of honey should be dissolved in 10 parts of boiling water, and then 1 part of pollen should be added after cooling to feed the bee colony, which can promote the bees to secrete more royal jelly and accelerate the building of honeycombs.

2. Feed pollen

When the pollen source is abundant, pollen combs can be taken out from the bee colony, concentrated and stored in the supers of a few bee colonies.

B. Pollen cake: 4 kg of pollen and 7.5 kg of concentrated syrup are mixed evenly to make cakes. They are spread on the frame beam of the bee colony. A piece of plastic film can be covered on the pollen cakes. Feed 100-300 grams each time and finish them in a week.

3. Feed water

Water is an indispensable substance for maintaining life activities. In the early spring and dry summer, it is even more necessary to feed water to the bee colony. Set up a waterer in the apiary, or feed water from the nest door with a nest door feeder. It is better to add about 0.1% salt when feeding water.

6. Artificial breeding of kingfish

Artificial queen breeding is beneficial to the cultivation of queen bees. It can accurately grasp the date when the queen bee emerges from the hive and avoid natural swarming.

1. Tools for artificial queen breeding

The wax bowl stick (the mold for dipping the wax bowl) is made of a wooden stick with fine wood grain, 100 mm long, and one end of the wax bowl is very round and smooth, with a diameter of 8-9 mm 10 mm from the end. The wax bowl stick can dip out the wax bowl, which is the base for raising the queen. The queen raising frame is the frame for placing the queen cell, which can be modified from a standard nest frame to have an equal width of about 13 mm. Three 10 mm wide strips are installed horizontally at equal distances in the frame. The insect transfer needle is a tool used to transplant small larvae into the queen cell bowl, which can be made of thick copper wire or goose feather tube, one end is thin and sharp, and the other end is spoon-shaped. The insect transfer needle with a spring is easy to use. In addition, towels, washbasins, royal jelly, etc. should be prepared.

2. Transfer of insects

Put a small amount of not very thick royal jelly in each wax bowl on the queen rearing frame, then take a frame of larval combs of appropriate age, shake off and sweep the bees on the combs, use the worm transfer needle to reach the back of the semi-circular larvae, gently pick them up, and gently place the larvae on the royal jelly in the wax bowl. After placing larvae in each bowl, put them first in the kingless colony for reception, and then move them to the large colony for feeding.

3. Insect transfer method

Single transfer means taking small larvae within 24 hours to breed queen bees. In order to improve the quality of queen bees, double transfer means taking large larvae within 24 hours to breed queen bees. That is, after taking large larvae within 24 hours, the large larvae are removed and replaced with small larvae within 24 hours to breed queen bees.

After the second transfer, the queen bee will emerge from the hive after 12 days. The mating group should be organized 2 days before the queen bee emerges from the hive. The mature queen cells should be distributed to the mating group 1 day before. After the queen bee mates successfully, a new queen bee will be bred.

Breeding queens in autumn is basically the same as breeding queens in spring. There is no difference.

Just search for bee breeding on Baidu