Altigoo-Apiculture

Testing of our strain queens

JMF64 — 2016-11-30T09:30:31Z

We accord a lot of importance to the breeding of males. We own 200 hives provided with males frames, all located on a circle of 5 km of diameter. On our production, over 50 different strains take part of the queens' fertilisation. We hope to improve significantly the vitality and the natural defence of the colonies with this large genetic diversity.

The queens are fertilised either in nuclei of type Kieler, in Maxi+ or in 6 frame hives. Those queens are also on apiaries specially dedicated to the fertilisation situated in the centre of the perimeter.
According to the colonies behaviour in a case of natural change of queen in the hive, our estimation is that over 90% of our breeding males are participating to the fertilisation.

You can graft with low risk on our queens.

Mated queens' production

JMF64 — 2016-11-30T09:27:32Z

We produce yearly 4000 mated queens, exclusively in Kieler nuclei.
The Kielers are filled with package bees collected in our 10 frame hives. We usually begin the Kielers the week following the start of the rape-seed flowering. This technique allows us to control the swarming without enfeebling the colonies. In April, the hives are generally removed twice.

The start of the nuc:

We use virgin queens borned in incubators for the start of the nuclei. They are introduced directly with the package bees without particular restriction. Beforehand, the feeder is filled with candy.

The nuclei are brought at the honey house in a complementary black room and are refreshed regularly with a micro-watering system,
The colonies are remained closed for 3 nights. At the fourth night, we move the nuc on their support and open the bottom trapdoors a few minutes later.
15 days later, we check the success rate,
we remove the first queens 4 weeks after the start of the nuc. This long period lets time for the nuc renewal which is made by the young bees that are taking charge of the next queens. It's with this specific extension that we succeeded to limit a lot the desertions between the capture of the 1st and the 2nd queens.

Comments:

With the insertion of the virgin queen, the success rate is generally > 90%,
the biggest risk with the start of the nuc is the desertion in the days after the opening of the trapdoors. The colonies' confinement in a fresh and humid atmosphere seems to limit significantly this risk. However, we regularly still have problems with a batch each year…

Monitoring of the nuc during the season:

On the crop day, the nuc are feed with very diluted syrup. This sugar supply stabilises the orphan micro-colony. The quantities are adapted in function of the reserves and of the honey flow.
We remove some frames from the strongest nuc to avoid the overpopulation, which would arise problems for the next crop. Those frames are used to reinforce the nuclei that didn't give queens or to create new nuclei.
The next day, we introduce 11 day old royal cells,
the next crop of queens will take place 3 weeks later. We make 4 to 5 rotations/nuclei during the season.

Notices:

In the last 2 years, we have gradually ascended all our nuc on supports which facilitate the crops and the cells' insertion,

The production of fertilized queens in Kieler:

Swarms' production

JMF64 — 2016-11-30T09:21:51Z

Each year, we produce 1000 overwintered swarms.
Those swarms are almost all produced on 6 frame hives. The hives provide us the necessary of bees to fill the Kieler nuclei.
In March, which is also the start of spring, we open all the hives to check the sanitary conditions and to estimate the reserves. We note the colonies' strength (strong, medium or small) and we feed them, if necessary.
The following nights, we move the hives depending on their vigorousness to homogenize the apiaries.
Right at the beginning of the colza blossoms, we start the colonies' dividing up on 5 or 6 frames.

We let the queen with 2 sealed brood frames + 1 reserve frame + 2 building frames + 1 warm partition. The dividing up is made during the nectar flow. The foragers are making the colony bigger for a 6 frame hive, 1 or 2 weeks later.
The remaining frames are placed in an empty hive. If possible, we need a minimum of 2 brood-frames to constitute the new swarm. We add one building frame + 2 warm partitions; then we move the hive on an apiary located in our fertilization zone.
The next day, we introduce the fertilized queen bee of our choice, or more frequently, a 11 day old royal cell. Afterwards, we add 1 L of diluted syrup, even in a case of honey flow, in order to encourage the acceptance.
As soon as the queen is laying eggs since 1 week or more, the hive is moved on an apiary outside the fertilization zone.

6 weeks after the swarm constitution, the colony is on 5 or 6 frames.

Until 2012, we were dividing again the colonies to produce “swarms with a queen of the year”. One medium or strong hive at the end of winter (80% of the bee population) was giving 2 swarms during the season.
Since 2013, we place a honey chamber on those swarms as the sweet chestnuts blossom approaches. Those small hives will participate in the testing or our strain queens, for the honey production.

Swarms' production:

Le greffage

JMF64 — 2016-11-30T09:07:08Z

We graft 3 times/week from the end of March until mid-September, which represents approximately 60 mornings/year.
Each season, we produce more than 15 000 royal cells.

In order to maintain a large genetic diversity, each year, we graft on 60 lineages coming from inbreeding.

At each grafting, we take off frames in 10 strains colonies. Those frames containing different origins of queens are offered to the bee-keepers 5 weeks later.

The grafting always takes place in the morning time and we use Chinese Grafting tools. Each grafting takes one hour for a total of forty bars.

The grafting frames in our strains:

The graft:

The breeders colonies

JMF64 — 2016-11-30T08:58:02Z

We rarely use the starter (maybe we are wrong?) .Until 2010, we were using orphan colonies. While today, we changed for a double system which is composed of:

orphan breeders on super-frames,
breeders on Dadant frames in Cloake Board system. This system allows us to detect the lineages with the best maternal instinct and to select this temper.

Our work with the breeders:

There is 1 or 2 grafting in each breeder:

3 times a week (Tuesday, Thursday & Saturday morning), we introduce 2 clips of 14 queens-cell cups containing very young larva grafted 1 hours earlier,
meanwhile, we remove the cells' batch introduced the past week and we place it in the incubator.

Each 8 days, between 2 grafts, we lift up the broods:

we take 2 opened frames with their nurse bee (queen side) that we move into the breeding compartment,
we move down the 2 frames, now with a capping, lifted up the previous week.

The feeding:

At each graft, we put protein dough into the breeders,
Depending of the nectar flow conditions, we also distribute ½ to 1 L of diluted syrup or water mixed with honey.
Each month, every breeder (orphan or Cloake Board) is treated with oxalic acid to reduce the Varroa pressure.

The behaviour of the breeders:

The royal cells' production in a Cloake system:

Closed starter:

The incubator

JMF64 — 2016-11-30T08:44:53Z

We use the incubator from the 8th day to the 11th (sometimes until the 12th).
Inspired by the advices of many people, I created a heating system in an old refrigerator. I often had problems with some queens' batch. Fortunately, those problems stopped the day I changed the thermostat and the resistance. In fact, since the day I adapted a wire resistor without inertia, all my problems disappeared. It is better to work with an incubator from the market.
Thereby, we continued to perseverate on this “refrigerated system“, which allows us to stock all the clips identified with the colonies' name; we move them on the apiaries 3 days later, for the insertion of our cells.
The grafting traceability from the cells insertion in the nuclei or in the swarms is possible because of this technique.

Incubator's arrangement:

1 fridge
1 heating resistance, without inertia
1 thermostat for the incubator
1 container filled with water to assure an air saturated with water
1 small fan so the air circulates

The 11th day after the grafting, we remove the royal cells in order to insert them in our swarms or in our nuclei. We put hair roller cages on the unused cells.
In some cases, we allow the queen bee to be born in the incubator, for example for the start of the nuclei or if we have too many cells. The virgin queens are put in a small cage and placed in the incubator at 27°c.

Inseminated queens' production

JMF64 — 2016-11-30T08:37:28Z

Each year, we inseminate more and more queen bees:

150 queens until 2011,
over 300 queens in 2013,
… and our objective is to increase even more our production in order to work only with inseminated queens as breeders, such as we do with the royal jelly hives.
We inseminate the queens at 2 distinct moments,
at the beginning of May we inseminate between 100 to 150 queens on 2-3 days, through the precious help of Gosia Bienkowska,
from mid-June to the end of July, we inseminate the balance which represents 25 queens/week.

The organisation for insemination program:

Preparation before insemination :

We start some Kieler by introducing virgin queens 6 to 10 days before the insemination date. Each queen is provided with her identity card and her lot number,
we place the nuclei in a line and we identify them with a number. This number is also written on the queen's lot,
the day before the insemination, we put the males in small cages that we place in the orphaned hives.

The day of the insemination:

In morning time, to avoid that the virgin queens fly away, we put them in small Nicot cages with attendant bees (with their identity card). Then, we let them in the feeders of the nucleus,
when the inseminator is ready, the inseminations require 4 or 5 virgin queens + the males' cage.
Proceeding of the insemination:
- take a sample of 8ul of sperm (8♂),
- only 1 narcosis from the ♀ during the insemination,
- the inseminated queen is reintroduced in the small hive with other bees,
- We place the cage in the incubator at 35°c, the time required for all the lot to get inseminated.

Once the insemination group is finish, the queens reach their nuclei. The small hive is placed in the feeder with a wide access between the bees and the candy.

The next days:

The following day, a control is made to check if the queen has been released in the nuc.
Once a week, a control is made to check the queens' laying. Also, it is important to write down the laying presumed date. Generally, all queens are in laying period 3 weeks after the insemination. For the latecomers, we insert a brood frames with a cap in order to maintain the dynamics in the colony. We never do a second narcosis.

The instrumental insemination:

The behaviour of our strain colonies

JMF64 — 2016-11-30T08:08:08Z

The lineage “strains” are inseminated queens that are used in the testing plan and/or in the grafting pool for the commercialized queens' production. We recognize them with their consanguinity level, in other words their generation within the selection pattern:

The pre-basic queens: they are a lineage in progress of settlement, notably by the inbreeding of the best lineages.
The basic queens: they are obtained with the instrumental inbreeding of two complementary pre-basis queens.
The colonies are brought on divisible hives, on 7 brood frames and reserves + 2 warm partitions + 1 feeding frame.
All though the season, we take brood frames and their bees in other to keep the colony under our control, by limiting the vigorousness, which also means the queen's laying.

The withdrawal of the graft frames for the royal cells' production:

The virgin queens' production

JMF64 — 2016-11-30T07:48:01Z

We commercialize annually between 500 to 1000 virgin queens.
We let some queens be born outside of brooders, because:

the apiculturists' demand,
when our amount of royal cells exceeds our needs.
We put those queens into cages with attendant bees and we post them by parcel post.

Virgin queens' production:

The queens' dispatch

JMF64 — 2016-11-30T07:43:23Z

Each year, we post more than 5000 queens. The fertilized queen bees are amassed on Wednesday, Friday and Monday morning. They are posted on Tuesday and Thursday. They are put in a cage with attendant bees and get identified with their identity card.
The virgin or fertilized queens are sent by express postal packet.

The preparation for the queens' shipment: