Professional Beekeepers

NSW Beekeeping Industry – 2020 economic report

2021-10-22T15:28:49+11:00Beekeeping on public land, Honey, Nutrition, Policy and compliance, Pollination|

NSW Performance Data and Insights 2020 The NSW Primary Industries Performance Data & Insights (PDI) highlights the economic output of the NSW Primary Industries sector each financial year. It reflects the underlying strength and long-term viability of primary industry sectors including beekeeping. 2020 marked the first in-depth look into honey and beeswax production in NSW.  The full report is available here: www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/about-us/publications/pdi/2020/honey-and-beeswax    Output (honey and beeswax sales) was $57 million, estimated down 12% year on year. Production was significantly impacted by drought and bushfires during 2019-2020. Essentially landless farmers, beekeepers must move their honey bee livestock from agistment on one source of flowering tree, shrub, crop or ground flora to another as they become available. Whilst bees gain some of [...]

Spring management

2020-09-18T14:00:48+10:00Breeding, Managing your hives, Nutrition, Pests and diseases|

Spring has sprung, and it is time for beekeepers to spring into action to ensure a good season. Early spring inspections Is there a laying queen? Is there a good brood pattern? Inspect for brood diseases - chalkbrood is a particular problem at this time of year How much food is left? Do you need to provide supplementary feeding? Do you need to add a super? Or even remove honey that the bees have collected over winter? Perform swarm management - split hives, replace older queens, reduce congestion Change your small hive beetle traps if necessary Combine weak colonies, remembering to kill one queen first and place newspaper between the two boxes Ensure honey made from supplementary feeding does not [...]

Controlled Breeding: Artificial Insemination of Queen Bees

2020-09-18T13:57:06+10:00Breeding, Genetics, Managing your hives|

The unique mating system of honey bees makes it incredibly difficult for beekeepers to accurately determine the fathers of their colonies. Virgin queens mate with approximately 30 drones at sites called Drone Congregation Areas (DCAs), which are open areas surrounded by trees. Drones fly from around 3.75km radius from the DCA. Any colonies within that area, either managed or feral, could contribute drones to the genetics of the colony headed by the now mated queen. When trying to select for certain traits, this becomes problematic. To get around this, scientists in the early- to mid-20th Century developed artificial insemination of queens. By selecting the mother colonies of the drones contributing to the insemination, scientists and beekeepers could now have much [...]

Plan Bee – Australian honey bee genetic improvement program

2020-09-18T13:53:46+10:00Breeding, Managing your hives, Pests and diseases, Plan Bee, Pollination|

Mission statement Plan Bee aims to foster a sustainable national genetic improvement program using innovative breeding technologies to transform the performance of honey bees in Australia. It will focus on traits of importance to beekeepers, and horticulture and broadacre industries dependent on honey bee pollination. The strength of this project lies in its ability to leverage benefits across multiple industries by creating a more profitable and sustainable beekeeping industry, improving crop pollination efficiency, and enabling industry expansion through enhanced pollination security. What we will deliver A research apiary at Tocal Agricultural College with 50 breeder queens and 200 production colonies tested under commercial beekeeping conditions Standardised selection criteria that improve honey bee performance, decrease the cost and impact of disease, [...]

Genetic evaluation of Australian honey bees

2020-09-18T13:51:30+10:00Breeding, Genetics, Managing your hives, Pests and diseases|

An AgriFutures Australia project by Robert Banks and Vinzent Boerner of the Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit, a joint venture between NSW Department of Primary Industries and the University of New England, investigated the utilisation of genetic evaluation in Australian honey bees. These methods are applied to most livestock and many plant industries world-wide. Genetic selection methods have now been used in honey bees in numerous countries throughout the world.  A grid can be used to estimate the area of brood or pollen Genetic evaluation relies on the collection of performance and pedigree data.  Performance can be measured in numerous ways: honey production, population strength, disease, gentleness, hygienic behaviour, swarming frequency and royal jelly production, as examples.  Pedigree [...]

Have your say on queen breeding

2020-09-18T13:48:55+10:00Breeding, Managing your hives, Pests and diseases, Plan Bee|

If Australia is going to have a prosperous honey bee industry, then queen quality and breeding is going to be very important to make sure our bees are at their best. In preparation for a new breeding program we asked beekeepers what they think.  Two surveys were undertaken in 2018 to assess beekeepers’ and queen producers’ attitudes around queen production and purchase, and also toward a proposed queen bee breeding program.  The survey found that  59% of beekeepers are unhappy with the amount of information available when purchasing queens 65% are happy with the quality of the queens they purchase Issues around time and money versus the price of queens deter queen producers from performing more selection Beekeepers pointed to [...]

Plan Bee National Honey Bee Genetic Improvement Program

2020-09-18T13:48:23+10:00Breeding, Genetics, Plan Bee|

Plan Bee aims to work with queen breeders, producers, beekeepers and growers to create a sustainable national honey bee genetic improvement program using innovative breeding technologies to transform the performance of honey bees in Australia. It will focus simultaneously on traits of importance to beekeepers, and of the horticulture and broadacre industries dependent on honey bee pollination. The strength of this project lies in its ability to deliver benefits across multiple industries by creating a more profitable and sustainable beekeeping industry, improving crop pollination efficiency, and enabling industry expansion through enhanced pollination security. Video: Nadine Chapman from the University of Sydney talks about the National Honey Bee Genetic Improvement Program https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ngwrz5-lYNk Goals Queen breeders Breeding is valued and [...]

Temper, temper

2020-09-18T13:47:16+10:00Breeding, Managing your hives, Plan Bee|

No one likes a cranky colony. They can cause a lot of grief for urban beekeepers and pollination contractors in particular. It seems simple enough to just select the nicest hive and use it to breed from, but measuring temperament can actually be quite difficult. Scientists love to measure things. Preferably the way in which you measure something should be objective and repeatable – not influenced by feelings or external factors, and you should get similar results each time you make the measurement.  Scientists have come up with many ways to measure temperament: Hitting a hive and counting how many angry bees come at you The distance you have to run before they stop trying to get you The time [...]

How is Plan Bee different from previous breeding programs?

2020-09-07T13:41:10+10:00Breeding, Managing your hives, Pests and diseases, Plan Bee, Pollination|

Our national honey bee genetic improvement program (Plan Bee) seeks to create a sustainable breeding program using innovative technologies to transform the performance of honey bees in Australia. Many breeding programs have contributed to the industry, so how is this one different? The program is ‘decentralised’ We will breed queens at NSW DPI. However, we do not expect to supply all the queens needed by industry from this stock (nor do we want to). It may not be appropriate for a beekeeper in Tasmania to choose queens on the basis of how they perform in northern NSW. Different traits will be needed, and the queens may not perform as well in Tasmania as they did in NSW. Rather, we want [...]

Polyandry: what is it and why should beekeepers care?

2019-05-07T10:43:55+10:00Managing your hives, Pests and diseases|

Polyandry, a fancy word for something that all beekeepers know: honey bee queens mate with multiple males. The average is 12, but two Australian studies suggest this is an underestimate, with 28 mates being more likely. Previous research has shown that the number of times a queen mates can have important repercussions for beekeepers. Too few mates results in colonies having increased likelihood of death, disease and queen replacement. Honey production is also lower in colonies headed by queens with low mate numbers. In a bee colony the worker offspring from one father are referred to as a ‘subfamily’ or ‘patriline.’ The greater the number of subfamilies in the colony the better because workers from different subfamilies have different propensities [...]

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