How To Identify A Queen Bee From A Bad Bee?

High-quality queen bees are the basis of high yield of bee colonies, which largely determines the development of bee colonies, and here are some ways to identify queen bees.

1. Body size standards

High-quality queen bee has some more obvious characteristics in terms of body size, such as the body size is generally larger and relatively slender, the larger the body size indicates the more developed the reproductive organs, the longer the body size indicates that the ovarian tube is also longer, only the queen with these characteristics has the basis to become a good queen, in the identification to the body of handsome, strong chest, slender abdomen without bloated as the basic principle, while requiring the queen bee to be free of disease, disability, broken wings and other conditions.

2. Age requirements

High-quality queen bee has strict requirements for age, although the queen bee can live for 4~5 years under normal circumstances in the bee colony, but after the second year, the performance of the queen bee will gradually weaken, such as in the reproduction rate and secretion of "queen bee pheromones", the decline in reproductive rate will seriously affect the development of the bee colony, and the reduction of "queen bee pheromones" can easily lead to bee fever, so from the age point of view, the age of high-quality queen bees must be less than 2 years.

3.The ability to reproduce

The main role of the queen bee is to reproduce offspring, so to become a high-quality queen bee has extremely high requirements for fecundity, and from the strength of the egg-laying power to identify the advantages and disadvantages is the most powerful, but the bee species are different and its identification standards are also different, such as medium bees in the high production period requires more than 1200 eggs per day, and Italian bees require more than 2000 eggs, and with strong egg-laying power is not necessarily a high-quality queen, but also requires that the eggs must be neat and orderly.

4. Closing time

The queen bee to mate with the male bee after the tail can normally lay eggs and reproduce, the queen bee chooses the male bee through the flight competition during the tail, so the sooner the queen comes out of the tail with the male bee, the more number and quality of the male bee with the tail, the stronger the spawning ability of the queen bee after the tail back to the nest, simply put, the queen bee who went out earlier to mate the tail has more selectivity, on the contrary, the queen bee is less selective, in fact, it is the difference between picking one in ten thousand and picking one in a hundred.

5. Genetic characteristics

The queen bee is the carrier of genetic diversity of bee species, and has a direct impact on the production performance, disease resistance, bee division, etc. of the bee colony, so the high-quality queen bee must have excellent genetic characteristics, here take the middle bee, the middle bee itself is strong, if a middle bee queen body size, age and reproductive rate have reached the conditions of the high-quality queen bee, but if the breeding bee colony is extremely bee-split, it can not be called a high-quality queen.

Summary: The quality of the queen bee is actually determined by the ability to spawn and genetic characteristics, the stronger the egg-laying ability, the faster the development of the colony, and excellent genetic characteristics are also the basis for the high yield of the bee colony, so a variety of factors should be considered comprehensively when choosing the queen.