Low start in breeding - get to know the process of instrumental insemination

Greetings to all who have an infinite love for honey bees in their hearts!

Again this year it is possible to apply for the instrumental insemination service of queen bees. 

With instrumental insemination service, each beekeeper has an excellent opportunity to introduce bee colonies with queens and drones of known origin to their apiary and take the first steps in breeding work!

READY - Identification of queen bees and drones and reservation of insemination dates.

Choose the best bee colonies in your apiary and decide from which colonies you will rear queens and drones.

Please contact us when you find out that the drone comb you have placed in the bee colony has been laid with eggs. Drones will be suitable for insemination at 38-44th day after the queen has laid eggs, so we can immediately book a week to carry out the insemination process. You can start to rear new queen bees 20 days later to ensure that the queens are 6-12 days old from birth on the day of insemination (read more about rearing drones here and read about our last year's experience and recommendations here).

We have set the minimum number of queen bees of 40 inseminated queens per trip. If the minimum number of queen bees for insemination cannot be provided individually, we recommend cooperating with other local beekeepers in the immediate area who also want to use this service or by cooperating with local beekeeping society who could help with organizing the event so more beekeepers are able to receive the insemination service.

STEADY - Operations until the date of insemination.

On the fourth day, when you find out that the drone comb you have placed in the bee colony has been laid with eggs, after hatching, transfer frame to the nursery colony. For drone rearing process you can choose bee colony with swarm tendency, queenless or with virgin queen. Use queen excluder for beehive entrance or between hulls to isolate drones. Maintain brood care mood, add brood and feed combs to nursing colony.  If there is no nectar yield in nature, colony must be stimulated with sugar syrup with 1:1 ratio or honey and pollen. Drones will be born on the 24th day. A few days before the day of insemination, it is highly recommended to allow the drones to fly to defecate and reduce the risk of contamination of the semen during collection.

You can choose the most suitable option for you in drone rearing: mark the newly born drones and let them live freely in the apiary (you will get very healthy drones of 100% known origin); take the nursery colony with drones to an isolated area (forest e.g.) a few days before insemination and allow the drones to fly for a couple of evenings (the drones will be healthy and clean); to prepare a drone flight cage, which must be used at least for a week before insemination (for more information click here).

Ideally, grafted queens are allowed to be born and live freely in nucleus or newly made swarm colony until the day of insemination. Be sure to attach a queen excluder to the front of the beehive entrance! On the day of insemination, the queen will need to be caught and placed in the queens cage. When catching a bee queen, it is recommended to use a water spray and do it in the morning or evening after the natural departure time. However, if you are worried that the queen bee may fly in the air during the capture, another good option is to keep the queen cage above its intended nucleus. A free-living bee queen will be larger in size, healthier and easier to inseminate.

GO - Process on the day of insemination.

On the agreed day of insemination we will go to you. When coming to you, please plan in which room there will be a sink, an electrical outlet, a freely accessible window against which to fly the drones and inspect the queens. We will take care of the work table and chairs ourselves.

Your first task of the day will be to catch all the queen bees in plastic tubes or cages. All bee queens will be treated with carbon dioxide for the first time. You will then be able to return them back in nucleus.

The next task - you will have to prepare the drones, they can be brought into the room in a wooden cage or with frame in an isolator. We will release drones to fly against window and start collecting sperm. By noon, it will be easy to pick up the drones from frames or bring them with whole frames into the room, as they will still be calm and will not be in a hurry to fly. In the afternoon, however, the drones will have to be picked up from drone flight cage or brought into the room in a closed isolator so that they do not fly off into the air.

After collecting the semen, you will be able to bring in 2-3 queens for insemination at a time. During the insemination process, the queens will be treated with carbon dioxide for the second time. After insemination, we will put the bee queen on paper sheet (5x5 cm) and you can take it back to the nuclei so that inseminated bee queen is immediately taken care of by worker bees and the bee queen can move freely immediately, which is very important for the first 40 hours after insemination because of semen migration into queen spermatheca. Last year, the inseminated bee queen was lightly sprayed with honey water before being added to the nuclei to mix the odors and make it easier for the bee queen to be accepted, especially if a foreign bee queen was returned to the nuclei. For safety reasons, we also sprayed the entire nuclei from the top with honey water. The entrance must be equipped with a queen excluder until the day the queen has started laying.

New nucleus or swarm colonies have to be carefully prepared before the adding of a foreign bee queen and all supersedure queen cells have to be removed, ideally the nucleus contains only the sealed brood (so it must be prepared at least 9 days before the day of insemination).

FINISH - The instrumentally inseminated queen has started laying.

After insemination, the queen bee will start laying in about a week, some queen requires 2-3 weeks. Wait for the brood to be sealed and start evaluating the queen bee and the young worker bees.

A very precise and detailed description with rich visual material about the instrumental insemination of queen is available here [Cobey, S. W., Tarpy, D. R., & Woyke, J. (2013). Standard methods forinstrumental insemination of Apis mellifera queens. Journal ofApicultural Research, 52(4), 1-18.].

If you have any questions about both planning and insemination process itself or have any problems, feel free to write to +371 28772467 (Agnese), e-mail [email protected] or contact us on the website in the contacts section.