Larger queens, higher queens – section 3

The qualities of the queen – her fecundity, longevity, genetics and so on. – are a very powerful affect on colony ‘good fortune’.

You need to measure that good fortune in the case of replica (if free-living, does the colony swarm effectively?) or – of extra relevance to a beekeeper – through the load of the honey supers. However bees do different issues as nicely, so good fortune might be quantified through spring growth (for financially-rewarding almond pollination contracts at ~$200/hive), Royal jelly or propolis manufacturing, or preferential pollination of particular vegetation.

Beekeeping … so a lot more than honey!

However, regardless of the standards, the queen that heads the colony is significant to the good fortune of the colony. Moreover, regardless of the fascinating qualities of the colony are, there’s compelling proof that larger queens are higher queens; they lay extra eggs, they lay for longer, they produce larger staff, who accumulate extra pollen and so on.

Background studying

I have mentioned larger queens making higher queens in 3 previous posts. Those quilt:

• one of the crucial background evidencing why larger queens in point of fact are higher queens
• the demonstration of a maternal impact in honey bees, the place the queen invests extra sources (e.g. larger eggs that, in flip, produce larger queens) when laying in queen cups relatively than in employee comb … this means that grafted queens might not be the most efficient achievable high quality
• some sensible approaches to milk the maternal impact when queen rearing. Those are very a lot in growth research, however I believe that the early effects display promise, in particular for the ones new to queen rearing and/or averse to grafting day-old larvae

I’m going to attempt to steer clear of re-hashing the ones posts, however – in puts – they will have to be regarded as required background studying for the issues I wish to quilt right here.

These days, I am going to speak about the affect of the scale of the queen cellular cup at the dimension of the ensuing queen.

I have no longer noticed a dialogue of this within the beekeeping literature, regardless of it being primarily based upon science going again well-over a decade.

It’s immediately related to people who rear queens through grafting and the ones hoping to milk the maternal impact for his or her queen rearing.

It is a fascinating tale and one who has the possible to ship an ‘simple win’ if you find yourself queen rearing the usage of synthetic (generally plastic) queen cellular cups, regardless of the process you employ.