VSHBreeders.org: VSH Bee Breeding Forum - All Forums

beginner/practice inseminination

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:44:14 -0500

Hi, in some ii workshops I attended recently I learned that it is a good idea for the beginner to inseminate several or 100 queens as practice with smaller amounts of semen just to get the technique down. These queens can be dissected to check for migration of the sperm to the spermatheca to see if you are being successful with your technique.

I have a few questions about this.

How long should it take for the sperm to migrate? a few hours?

I read that caging the inseminated queen in a bank can restrict migration of sperm to the spermatheca. Putting the queens into mating nucs is instead recommended. Should these practice queens also be placed in mating nucs? I tried a queen recently and the sperm did not migrate so I'm wondering if it was because I caged her or because of something else? Also I'm not positive I waited long enough.

Also, should I dilute the semen more then usual so that I don't have to collect so much?

Thanks!

Open mating & production queen stratigies

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:21:50 -0500

Hi, I'm making plans for next years open mated VSH bees. What are people's feelings about strategies for open mating?

Specifically, should I try each year to have my drone source colonies be completely unrelated stock, or can using the best of my previous year's open mated VSH bees as drone colonies be a good idea?

Seeing VSH Behavior

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:48:36 -0500

This past Sunday, we hosted a regional queen rearing group. We talked about breeding and stock evaluation.

Out in the bees it was thrilling to show folks brood frames where VSH behavior was occuring: to see mite feces in uncapped cells and see recapped cells.

Thanks Bob Danka, for illustrating some of the details in observing VSH behavior when you were out here in MD in June--we were able to point them out to the group very easily.

Adam

Delayed Oviposition (egg laying after II)

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:23:03 -0500

Hi
Pretty quiet in here...
Is there a party somehwere?

This season I've seen II queens go for some time (3 weeks-1 month) before laying.
Haven't found anything different from other years of II.

Anyone else observe this phenomena this year or in previous years?

Adam Finkelstein

Mid-Atlantic: HOT ENOUGH FOR YOU?

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 19:17:10 -0500

To top off this fine season so far
The last few days have been over 100 degrees.
Call me a lightweight but man I'm ready for some
cooler weather!

Adam Finkelstein

Freezing semon

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 18:23:50 -0500

What tempter can you freeze and hold semen for? And how long can you hold it? I was thinking about collecting semen and holding it until early spring and get a jump on my queen breading

Hello from central Indiana

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 15:57:12 -0500

Hello

My name is Jeff Dittemore; I am in north central Boone County Indiana.

I had bees when I was a kid and got out of it. I got back into in a couple of years ago. My wife and I have a small bee keeping business and we are looking to getting into breeding queen and also doing instrumental insemination.

I am wanting to learn more about bee genetics and looking at hyper-insemination.

There is so much to learn about bees and I so want to be a good beekeeper.

So please drop me a line and let’s get to know each other and help each other.

I am looking for insemination equipment.

Please let me know if you know of any for sell cheep..........

insemination workshops, summer 2010

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 07:26:39 -0500

Just wanted to point out that two opportunities (in eastern US) are coming up to learn a little about instrumental insemination of honey bees.

The Heartland Apiculture Society conference in Cookeville, TN will have two 50 min. session ii workshops led by Garrett Dodds of the USDA Baton Rouge bee lab on July 9th. Full conference is July 8th - 10th. see http://www.heartlandbees.com/

The Eastern Apiculture Society conference in Boone, NC will include a instrumental insemination clinic led by David Tarpy (NC State University) and Jeff Harris (USDA Baton Rouge bee lab) on Friday Aug. 6th. Full conference Aug 2nd - 6th 2010. see http://www.easternapiculture.org/programs/2010/

Russian X VSH Queens

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 09:18:13 -0500

Hello, My name is Ron Reddix and I am in southwestern Ohio. I have kept bees for a total of 25 years and currently have 10 hives. I purchased breeder Queens from Glenn apiaries and also some survivor stock Russians from Mikes Bees and Honey here in Ohio. I have new Queens for sale this year and they are priced low enough for all. These are naturally mated and my outlying drone hives consist of Russian and a feral bee I captured from the mountains of Stanton Ky. over 10 years ago, These bees have survived everything mother nature has thrown at them. Honey production is high and survival is 85% so far. If you are interested please contact me here.

Hello from wilkes NC

Sun, 23 May 2010 21:36:33 -0500

Hi
My name is Jamie Miles, I have been helping my grandfather with bees since i was 14 or 15. now I am 40 and my father Jim Miles and myself have decided to throw or hat into the ring and start a small bee business we call 7 Stands bee farm ( my 11 year old son named the company).
When we dicided to start we wanted to raise and keep bees that didnt require the use of chemicals, this is why we chose the VSH. We started by requeening everything we have with the VSH. We have raised a few queens for sale and are bulding 5 frame nucs of VSH to overwinter for sale.
We over wintered 15 to 20 VSH nucs last winter in North Carolina they did very well considering it was the coldest winter we have had since the 70's.
We have 2 breeder queens and 2 that are arriveing the end of June form Tom and Suki at Glenn's. I would like to say that the queens for Glenns are doing great and the service has been wonderful.
I am also excited to be apart of this forum and learn everything i can about the VSH bee and its traits
Thanks Jamie

II Queen Lifespan

Fri, 21 May 2010 04:40:22 -0500

Hello!
Came up for air--there are some great posts here--keep on posting!

II queens: some last two seasons, some last two months before they are superceeded.
Some lay like crazy but don't seem to be "right" and their colony tries to superceed them.
Some end up with a daughter laying alongside.

What are your thoughts on this? What do you think is causing the variation?

Adam Finkelstein

age of bee that uncaps infested brood?

Tue, 18 May 2010 20:57:42 -0500

What age bee uncaps varroa infested brood? If you had a non-vsh and vsh colony side by side and switched places would the vsh field bees uncap the varroa in the non-vsh brood? In other words, can the vsh bees be used as a treatment for a non-vsh colony? Or could I switch queens for a month and then switch them back to control varroa?

Wanted: Italian/vsh type breeding stock

Thu, 13 May 2010 08:14:21 -0500

Hello!
I'm interested in some stock that exhibits the "Italian" phenotype and also show mite tolerance.

Ideally, this would be good build-up stock that brooded well but didn't turn all its stores into brood
yet with feeding would respond by brood rearing quickly. Untreated or crossed with VSH is also a requirement.

Tom's Italian/VSH is awesome, I'm looking to diversify a little, however.
Would be interested in mated queens and/or virgins. Email or private message me.
Contact information is in sig file below.

Thanks,
Adam Finkelstein

Hello from Tennessee

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 07:54:20 -0500

Hi, I have a small bee business (< 50 colonies) in East Tennessee where I am getting into raising queens from VSH breeder queen from Glenn Apiaries. Thanks Tom. I sell splits and honey.

I also do most of the management of University of Tennessee honey bee colonies, of which are quickly growing to about ~50 hives. Here too we are raising queens from VSH breeders and open mating them. The goal is to come up with a population that has a good amount of diversity to begin a small breeding program. Our work is mostly Extension in nature, and this operation is a demonstration area that will introduce beginning queen rearing and basic breeding techniques (with open mating). I figure it will be easiest for small scale beekeepers in our area to raise queens from breeders purchased elsewhere, but understanding of breeding techniques is important for people to either do it themselves, or understand the value of what they are purchasing with breeder queens.

I also work on the eXtension.org project in bees at http://www.extension.org/bee_health . I am charged with uploading a depth of content about bees and plan to emphasize breeding and queen rearing information in the future. I hope to learn from folks on this board, and welcome content suggestions/submissions for the eXtension.org website, particularly in the area VSH bees and other issues in breeding.

Unrelated to all this is a masters thesis in pollination and native bees that I'm working on, plus other IT assignments at the university unrelated to bees.

Thank you, and I'm looking forward to learning from you all.

Hello

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 15:32:20 -0500

Greetings from Europe - Czech Republic.
I am bee breeder with about 110 colonies producing breeder queens for our (CZ) beekeepers. I've been breeding bees for 20 years, my population (strain) is of carniolan race (only this race is bred in CZ), of Carpathian population. This strain has been selected for good hygienic behavior for years. All colonies in my country are regularly treated with acaricides and no varroa tolerant (VT) bees are kept here. So I am trying to select VT bees (and also some my friends). It is clear to me and to a few co-operating be breeders that the main and substantial ability of VT bees is VSH - we know research results of J. Harbo and J. Harris and their selection success. I hope we will be also successful in a few years. Similarly to Glen Apiaries, I have only instr. inseminated quees in my colonies (or in most of them, resp.), therefore the selection may be intensive and faster...
Kvetoslav Cermak

Alcohol Wash Assay: SARE research Results

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 08:17:22 -0500

Hello,
We received a SARE farmer grant to research using the Alcohol Wash Assay and
the Freeze Killed Brood Assay as means to select for hardy, tolerant breeders.

The results are here:

http://www.vpqueenbees.com/awa

When NESARE updates our page, (the link is on the page above) the final report will available.
If you have any questions comments etc. reply in this thread.

Adam Finkelstein

II equipment

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 18:49:18 -0500

I am looking for a used II equipment set up. I have no experience at II, but plan on learning.
This is the first search for the equipment so I am not sure what neighborhood the cost of the set up would be. Any idea what value it should be would be helpful.
Frank Wyatt
WG Bee Farm
Eden, NC

Hello from Indiana!

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 22:06:47 -0500

Hi all,

My name is Dan Williamson. I am located in Northwest Indiana. Started with bees when I was 12yo working with my Dad. Got away from it in college and didn't get back into bees until 2004 when my wife and I moved to the country.

Currently running around 75 hives. Winter was nice to me this year with a 4% loss compared to my 50% loss the previous winter. This will be my 3rd year with no mite treatments.

I have raised queens for 4 years now. I do not do II myself but I've been known to get some of them from a couple of you on this board.

Busy time at my "day-job" so I'll be in and out but wanted to say hello!

Sperm competition in bees

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:07:55 -0500

Here's an interesting article about how drone seminal fluid kills rivals sperm, and how the queen can control the competition. I think this is a fascinating subject of great relevance to bee breeding.

Hello Union Grove NC

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:18:16 -0500

My name is Jim Miles.I have been a Baptist pastor for 37 years.
I had 40 or so hives at the age of 12 to 18. I had no mites !!! then.What a great time it was to have bees.
My son and I have 35 hives now, hope to have 100 hives of VSH in 3 years. Most of the hives we now have came from two Spartan Queens that i bought from VP Queens (thanks Adam).The best thing I have done for our bee stock was to add grafted VSH Queens from the Spartans Queens we got from Adam
We, Jamie my son and I, have two breeder Queens coming in April 1st from Glenn's.
Thanks for this sight.
Thanks Jim & Jamie