is it safe to raise our own queens in LA area?

[jimi chu]

Hello,

I’m new into beekeeping and I’ve read that it’s better to have a few hives and a couple more nucs. But to keep a few more nucs, we need more queens. And buying queens all the time is expensive. If we raise our own queen here in LA area, how’s chance that we end up with an Africanized colony? anyone here has experience doing so?

[susan rudnicki]

Hi, I am Susan, the forum moderator, and pleased to address your question. In this club, for the most part, we are using feral bees taken from the urban environment which ALREADY have Africanized genetics. Please familiarize your self through reading the excellent book written by our club founders, Rob and Chelsea, “Save the Bees with Natural Backyard Hives” to understand the background on AHB and the genetics of the honey bee in general. Purchased package bees are often very genetically inbred and do not have the strong resistance of our feral bees—purchased queens, then logically, are simply the same weak genetics laying eggs in your hives.
Some of our members are raising their own queens and quite successfully using the natural genetic make-up of the bees they already have. As long as the behavior and resilience to pests and disease are satisfactory to the bee keeper, the selection of these “foundation genetics” for the raising of queens is met. There are a number of technical methods to do this but remember—-this is a natural impulse for bees to do anyway on their own. Splits, adding in swarms as a combine, provision of eggs to a queenless colony—these are just some of the ways queens can be raised.
It sounds like you need to read a bit more on the reproduction of bees and understand more fully the way their society works from day to day and in the replacement or supercedure of queen bees. Certainly, to make some of these manipulations without buying bees or queens requires developing multiple colonies for provision of the resources you will need. My advice is to be somewhat skeptical of the general information describing AHB as “bad or ill-tempered” bee stock to keep.

[Dennis White]

Thanks for sharing this information.

[Author]

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