Selection of Breeder Queens
The process of rearing queens begins with the selection of a mother queen of high quality, a selection of the desired stock to breed from is very important.
Desirable Traits
- Gentleness
- High honey production
- Early spring build up in population
- Non or low level of swarming tendency
- Disease and varroa mite resistance
- Quiet on the comb
- Good comb builders
- Non or low propolis producers
- Good wintering quality
- Non or low followers (i.e. bees do not follow the beekeeper when leaving the apiary)
- Economical brood rearing when nectar flow is low or stopped.
- Bees that fly out at lower temperatures.
Honeybees are not all the same. Each race and colony has different traits; these traits depend on selective breeding.
If we breed from a colony with bad characteristics, we will be perpetuating these bad characteristics, similarly, if we breed from poor colonies, the resulting queens will be inferior.
