Hi everyone

Many thanks to Fred Smith for a very interesting talk on queen breeding. Further to his presentation (to confirm what he was talking about) and the question of introducing Italian Queens to our African bee colonies, the following comments were made on the google group Bees SA:

University of Pretoria etd – Lubbe, A (2005) Between 1930 and 1965 Lundie imported Italian queens as he wanted to breed more docile honeybees. But the Italian bees could not get established in southern Africa. When the queen was introduced the brood pattern was good. But over time as the number of African worker bees dropped and the number of Italian worker bees increased, the colony dwindled (Fletcher, 1977)African Allelic Dominance

When virgin queens produced by European colonies mate with African and European drones, the resulting colony will be composed of paternal African and European workers. In the next queen replacement cycle, these colonies will rear virgin queens from both African and European paternal lineage, but those from African paternity have a competitive advantage. Paternal African virgin queens develop faster and therefore emerge earlier than their European paternity counterparts, which may give them the opportunity to eliminate rivals confined in their queen cells (DeGrandi-Hoffman et al 1993 and 1998; Schneider and DeGrandi-Hoffman 2002 and 2003). Paternal African queens also kill more rivals than their European-paternity sister queens, produce more “piping” sounds that may prevent emergence of virgin queens or enhance dueling success, and attract workers to perform more “vibration signals” that may promote queen survival (Schneider and DeGrandi-Hoffman 2003; Schneider et al 2001). These factors in combination may result in paternal African queens becoming more likely to become the new laying queen of these colonies. With each new queen replacement cycle, virgin queens disproportionately mate with African drones, and African genetic introgression into European colonies continues.

We do not have to make the same mistakes again if someone else has tried it before. We learn from other and thereby save ourselves a lot of time and effort. Mr John Moodie, well-known beekeeper in SA commented further on the beessa@googlegroups.com:
Not to be recommended. The hybrid strain is extremely aggressive and because the Italian queen hatching time is slower they soon are superseded. We imported queens in the 1970’s in the Transvaal – from Dr Lundie – and so have experienced the effect.

This is the web address of the forum https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/beessa 

Many thanks to all who participated in the panel discussion and question session. Very interesting comments and valuable information were shared. Also a big thank you to all the members who freely shared their expertise and experiences. It was really made the evening worth attending!

Kind regards | Vriendelike groete

DR FANIE BOOYSEN
Registered Beekeeper No TA1168
Chairman of Southerns Beekeeping Association (SBA)
Member of the South African Bee Industry Organization (SABIO)
Registered Beekeeper at the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF)
Cell 082 332 8007
Tel (012) 993 0960
Fax 086 641 9181