#28. Breeding Long Island Honey Bees - a New Queen Rearing Program

Snow-covered hives, February 2014

Hard to believe, but the day before this photo was taken the bees were flying.  The air temperature got up to 46˚F, but with the sun hitting the boxes, the area around the hives may have climbed to around 50˚.  There was quite a lot of activity at 3 of my 5 colonies, and the other 2 were iffy.  Of course bees alive in February is absolutely no guarantee of survival, which can only be assessed after the Spring solstice at the earliest (see my last post).  Still, it was very exciting to see some hive activity.

I had a different sort of beekeeping season last year with almost no honey harvest and no swarming.  Most of my energy went into aggressive, early swarm prevention, by splitting colonies and moving  and rearranging hive bodies.  The goal was to prep my hives to accept new queens that I would be breeding with a group of Long Island beekeepers.  My beekeeping teacher Ray Lackey offered a challenge to members of the Long Island Beekeepers (LIBC) to start a group dedicated to breeding better bees on Long Island.  We had the first meeting at Ray's house in Bohemia and decided to start with 3 queens from which we would breed many - how many? - like possibly 300! - queens to share among local beekeepers.  The goal was to incorporate the ideal qualities of disease resistance, good temperament, climate hardiness, and good honey production in one or more strains of bees that will ultimately improve the DNA of all our Long Island bees.  'Imported bees', that is, those brought in from other regions, can carry diseases and pests that can infect our local populations.  The theory is that by developing desirable genetic traits in local bees through selection, we would not have to rely as much on 'foreign' bees and our own local stock would be improved.

Breeding queens from selected genetic material is geeky, exacting work.  It requires that we graft bee larvae - produced by the selected queens  - into specially manufactured queen cups, mounted on modified frames - in order to cajole armies of workers to transform these generic worker larvae into queens.  I love the science-project nature of this endeavor.  Each one of us who committed to the project had to dedicate one or two of our hives to exclusively producing bees that would raise the queens.  No excess honey production was possible, as we continually 'stole' the bee power it takes to make honey and channelled it into the nursery.

Keeping in mind that any fertilized bee egg can turn into a queen if the conditions are right - i.e. larger cell and an exclusive diet of royal jelly - all we had to do was to transfer young (1 - 3 day-old) larvae from the bottom of worker cells and graft them into the bottom of larger queen cups.  These cups, plastic bases, actually, are mounted on special frames and presented to a queenless colony.  If everything is right, the worker bees, sensing the lack of a queen and desperate to produce a new one, will adopt properly-grafted eggs, build the characteristic long, wax cells atop the plastic bases and raise queens.  

Queen-rearing frame with plastic queen cups in place.

Great in theory, but tough to do in practice.  First, the larvae are tiny and difficult to handle, using dental-type tools.  They need to be lifted out of the original cells - without squishing them, of course - and then deposited into the bottom of the new cups in the same position that they were in the original cells; if they are mal-positioned, the larval feeding tube will be obscured and the tiny creature will be unable to feed.   Then, they need to be transported as quickly as possible, preferably keeping them moist and warm, to the awaiting colony.  This was where I was at a distinct disadvantage compared to the others who participated in this experiment.  There was no way I could get the eggs grafted in Bohemia and get back to Montauk to install the frames in less than 2 hours.  Nevertheless, I had some success.  My first frame yielded one queen, my second attempt yielded nothing, my third try produced 2 queens.  The net result was that I sold one queen to a beekeeper in Sag Harbor, and the other 2 went to build up my own hives.  So right now, 2 of my 5 colonies are headed by Long Island-bred 'engineered' queens.  Some of the other queen rearers had phenomenal success.  I think a few folks harvested 20 queens per frame.  

Capped queen cell from my first attempt at queen rearing.  May 2013.

I'm anxious to try my hand again this year.  Whether I do or not depends on whether my bees survive the winter.  Fingers crossed.   

Ultimately, if the project is successful enough over time, we will look into applying for a grant to fund a scientific assessment of representative colonies throughout Long Island.