Local Bees vs. Southern Stock

[Allen Dick]

Are southern suppliers getting a bad rap?

The general talk is that bees and queens from the south are inferior to locally raised queens from locally acclimated stocks. Is this true?

As with anything in beekeeping, pinning down the truth is difficult since it is hard to get comparable samples and the environment changes during the time observations are being made. There are many confounding factors and the history of any specific samples may be unknown.

In my own experience, I have had bees from southern producers that performed as well as or better than others. This is not surprising since many queen producers routinely add genetics from their customers or from tested stocks. For example, some northern breeders have sent breeding stock south for reproduction and distribution back to the north. Border restrictions have made this process more difficult, but in the past, Homer Park used to select queens from producing hives in Northern Alberta and take them south to use in production of the next years queens.

Queen producers in the south vary in their interest and scrupulousness in incorporating northern stock and disease resistance into their production and ability to control the mating of production queens, so this makes it hard to generalize. I hear that people see big differences between the Georgia producers, for example, and these differences may vary from year to year. My Alberta friends buy queens from some specific California producers and do not seem to find the resulting hives inferior to hives headed by locally produced queens.

Besides genetic selection, there may be other factors we do not understand in acclimation to a region. It does not seem to matter where the stock originated, but, according to anecdotal evidence, after a few years in a locale, bees may demonstrate better adaptation by better wintering, better temper and better production.

Personally, the best year I ever had was the year we brought in the surviving hives marked as "best" from the outyards the following spring, selecting only those with clean bottom boards and no chalkbrood mummies.

From those 80 or so hives, we used about a dozen for grafting and the rest stayed in the mating yard to supply brood and drones.

Our crop was the largest ever that year. Coincidence?

[cam bishop]

Some of my best queens have come from Florida, Texas and Oklahoma. I like my queens well mated when I put them in the hives. If I get late April or early May queens from those areas they are generally well mated. I have had pretty bad queens from GA when they are mated in late March or early April. I do like local queens and get some from Connecticut - an exceptional breeder there - but I wait until late June or early July for them. This year I'm planning to requeen my production hives with cells from him. I notice not much difference in winter survival from location. I do see better survival generally from the Carniolan breed. I particularly like the VSH Carni's I get from Oklahoma.

[karen]

Though I have been exposed to this SARE project http://www.nesare.org/State-Programs/Ma ... hardy-bees “A comparison of honeybee colony strength and survivability between nucleus and package-started colonies.” through club meetings and state meeting, they always have Erin speak on this SARE study. I just do not see the same results in my hives. I use plenty of queens from GA in my spring nucs and in my production hives. I also sell a lot of queens from GA to local beekeepers. I get them at a good price so can sell them for a good price which is why people want them. My home bred queens I sell for more because of my time invested into them. I probably have my hives 50/50 between home grown and GA queens and honestly do not see a big difference in survival.

Where I do see a big difference is when I change my management. The year I tried HopGuard as a fall treatment I lost over half the colonies in that yard. For me management is the difference not where my queens come from. I know there are some poor queens out there but I enter cautiously when trying out new breeders. A few from here and a few from there and see what they do over time.
Over the years I have had Glenn, Palmer, Finkelstein, Latshaw, and my good ole GA reliable queens from H&R and Wilbanks Apiaries.

[Allen Dick]

I'm speaking at SABA in March and have been contemplating subjects and presentation methods in advance in light of changes in the demographics and expectations of audience, as we have been discussing in another thread.

Honey Bee World • View topic - Updating Topics for Beekeeping Groups in 2014
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1515

I noticed today that another speaker at the SABA conference is Meghan Milbrath, and since I don't know her, I Googled her (of course) and got a lot of hits. I'm impressed.

What is of interest to this thread follows

Meghan Milbrath - Northern Bee Network
http://northernbeenetwork.com/directory ... n-milbrath

Looking for Local Bees? - Northern Bee Network
http://northernbeenetwork.com/local-bee ... keepers-2/

and this
Local honey bees for Northern beekeepers by Meghan Milbrath — Kickstarter
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/84 ... beekeepers

[Countryboy]

Are southern suppliers getting a bad rap?

The general talk is that bees and queens from the south are inferior to locally raised queens from locally acclimated stocks. Is this true?

Yes and no. What you hear is bias. I think it depends on what the southern queens are used for.

The old saying is that 99% of the beekeepers own 1% of the bees, and 1% of the beekeepers own 99% of the bees. You're listening to people from that vocal 99% who only own the handful of bees. Don't assume they speak for 99% of the hives.

Since 2007, US beekeepers have made more money from pollination than from honey production. For many commercial beekeepers, pollination pays the bills, and the honey is the bonus check. If you think that queen producers are not focusing on a good pollination queen, then you are kidding yourself.

Migratory beekeepers want hives that brood up heavily for pollination. Most queens are produced geared towards a migratory pollinating beekeeper. It's not uncommon to hear of migratory beekeepers requeening 4 times a year.

Hobbyists tend to be more interested in survivability, gentleness, honey production, etc. Producing queens for the hobbyist market is a niche market. Hobbyists and honey producers want a different queen than what is being produced for the migratory market.

I do find it quite ironic that Joe Latshaw lives right down the road from me. He produces breeder queens to several of the big name queen guys in southern states. When the daughter queens come back here to Ohio, they can't handle our winters anymore.
(But I have heard that drones contribute 60%...which leads me to believe that inferior drones are mating with the daughter queens if they lose their survivability so fast. But I have never been able to get good information about how to set up drone producers around mating yards...I get the idea that no one really knows...but that's another topic.)

[Allen Dick]

Migratory beekeepers want hives that brood up heavily for pollination. Most queens are produced geared towards a migratory pollinating beekeeper. It's not uncommon to hear of migratory beekeepers requeening 4 times a year. Hobbyists tend to be more interested in survivability, gentleness, honey production, etc. Producing queens for the hobbyist market is a niche market. Hobbyists and honey producers want a different queen than what is being produced for the migratory market.

You are batting 100 tonight.

We should note, as you have, that northern honey producers share some of those criteria with hobby beekeepers, especially honey producers who winter, so it is not just hobby beekeepers who want something besides prolific bees.

Package and queen producers want bees that build up regardless of season or weather and build cells at the drop of a hat. Pollinators want the prolific bees, but not the cell building. Northern producers do not want either, so the queens chosen for the packages may be from different stock or even brought in.