Document your queen rearing
Track the origin, mating and traits of your queens – and see after a few years which lines actually perform in your operation.
Anyone raising their own queens soon has more of them than memory can hold. Which one came from which line, which was the gentle one, and which one did you swear never to breed from again? iBeekeeper helps you keep queens and breeding colonies apart.
What you can record
- Origin and breeding line of the queen
- Year and marking colour
- Requeenings and when they happened
- Traits such as temper, honey yield and swarming tendency
The colour code, and why the year matters
The international marking system runs on a five-year cycle: white, yellow, red, green, blue – then it starts over. So the colour tells you the year of emergence, provided you know which cycle you are in.
This is exactly where it breaks down in practice. A queen marked green may be one year old or six. With the year in the record the guesswork disappears – and you can see at a glance which colonies carry an ageing queen. Declining laying, drone-laying and sudden swarming in high summer most often start there.
Assess traits more than once
A single assessment says little. A colony can be defensive on a muggy day in August without the queen being at fault. Only when the same trait shows repeatedly across a season does it become a characteristic.
So it pays to record temper, steadiness on the comb, swarming tendency and yield again and again rather than once. After two years you can base your selection on observations instead of recollection.
Swarming tendency is heritable
Anyone who habitually breeds from the colony that gives them the most work is breeding that work into their stock. If the same colonies keep turning up during swarm control, that is breeding information – provided it is written down somewhere.
Keep breeding colonies separate
Breeding colonies need different details from production colonies. Through colony groups you give them a form of their own that holds what matters for breeding – without cluttering the hive records of everything else.
Frequently Asked Questions
What can I record about queen rearing?
Origin, mating, emergence date and stud book number of the queen, plus the colony she belongs to.
Can I trace the lineage?
The stud book number records which line a queen comes from, so selection decisions stay justifiable later on.