Hygienic traits.

[TenshiB]

Not sure if this subject is in the right section or if it should go to some other section but here it is.

Our very first hive was in May of 2012 and we got them as a package from Baxley, GA. The old queen from this hive took a while to get ramped up and laying eggs (not to mention the whole aspect of completely lacking experience). Her brood patterns were pretty nice but never exactly solid. My other hives that came from other sources have some queens that seem to have almost perfectly solid brood patterns.. One queen actually seems to be laying so much that we're seeing several deep frames of nothing but capped brood (no stores on these frames). BUT I brought that up just as comparison to the "first bees". Since May of 2012, that old queen swarmed after a little over a year and left us her daughter (we caught the old queen and her swarm, but she left again.. :-x ). The daughter seems to lay about the same:  decent brood pattern but no where NEAR as spectacular as the queen that's laying whole sides of frames. We do notice, however, the hive with the average laying queen has a propensity to actively kick out any defective bees, larvae, and pupae whereas the other hives do not. This past Sunday we checked the hive and found one gleaming white and squishy pupae bee (almost fully developed) halfway pulled from her cell..

So is the queen a decent queen and the reason for several empty cells in the capped brood just signs of hygienic genetics?

Thanks! [=

[BeeMaster2]

In the hive that has the perfect pattern, I'll bet that it has lots of mites and bees with defective wings, especially compared to the hive with the spotty pattern. What you are seeing as you suggest is that the bees are removing any larvae that is defective in any way especially ones that they smell mites in. I will take the mildly spotty pattern every time. If you see about half of the brood missing on most of your frames then you probably have a queen that mated mostly with her off spring. Half of the males genes are hers and half is the fathers. The bees remove all of the ones that have all of the queens genes.
Jim

[TenshiB]

Thanks for the reply! I'll have to look really careful-like on the bees/frames with the high-octane laying queen and see if I spot many mites. So far I haven't noticed any, really, but I know that there must be some mites there.. The hive (super layer queen's hive) was established this past April, so it's pretty young. Just booming! I'm not too certain that they won't swarm.

But I digress.. the hive that I wanted to talk about was the one with less bees, and a little bit of spotty pattern. It was established in May of 2012 and the queen in there is a queen that those bees reared after the old queen left with half of the work force in May of 2013.. She's either pretty hygienic or not mated very well.. Either way, they aren't doing too terribly and are pretty good at building their stores. Just not really above par like the comparison hive.. [=