Honeybee Genetics

Genetics take some getting your head around. The processes of meiosis and mitosis are not easily understood, for me at least. I'll try to explain how honey bee genetics works in a simple way and to explain how understanding it can help in our bee breeding.

Chromosomes are the structures that contain the genes of an organism. Bees have about 15,000 genes. Most animals normally have two sets of chromosomes. One set comes from the mother and one from the father. They are called diploid. Di means two, and ploid stands for chromosome.

Queens and worker bees have 32 chromosomes, 16 from the mother (via the egg) and 16 from the sperm with which the egg is fertilised. Drones are produced from unfertilised eggs. They do not receive a sperm cell when their egg is laid. This means that they only have half the number of chromosomes (16 rather than 32). They are then said to be haploid, from the Greek haploos, single.

Each egg laid by the queen will be unique due to chromosomal cross over during meiosis. Simply put, the genes are mixed. The potential number of possible combinations is huge. Every daughter (worker or daughter queen) will be genetically different from her sisters. Each egg receives half of the queen's 32 chromosomes, she can therefore only pass on half of her genes to her (daughter) offspring. 

Drones, as we have said, are produced from unfertilised eggs, their genetic make up is 100% from their mother. Each drone will still be unique, due to the chromosomal crossover over of their mother's genes. All sperm cells produced by an individual drone will be identical, genetic clones. The drone only has 16 chromosomes, each sperm cell must carry 16 chromosomes, so each sperm cell has 100% of this genetic material.

When selecting colonies to breed from we generally breed from our best queen, which makes sense! However when selecting colonies to rear drones from we must remember that drones develope from unfertilised eggs. Their genes come from the mating of their grandmother, not their mother! Not easy the get your head around but it does make sense if you've understood the above. It is therefore essential to keep accurate records for queen and drone rearing.

We can use this knowledge to selectively breed our honey bees. A colony (or colonies) with desirable traits can be used to rear a large number of daughter queens. The sperm cells from the drones produced by this new generation of queens will carry only genes from the original (desirable) queen. For example, if we aquire say a 100% AMM queen (we are interested in native bees after all), raise lots of daughter queens from her and encourage them to raise drones (here), we can use these colonies in isolated mating apiaries or select only drones from these to carry out artificial insemination to give us 50% AMM - 50% hybrid bees. By repeating the process, taking larvae from the 50% pure AMM colonies and mating with the drones from the daughter queens (100% AMM drones) the next generation will now be 75% AMM. For the following generation 87.5%, the next 93.75, then 96.9%, 98,4%, 99.2% and so on. Starting with bees that are part AMM will mean we start off at a higher percentage.

This technique of line or inbreeding can be used to fix a number of desirable traits not just race. We have to be aware though that there are consequences of using this technique as well as advantages.

This queen is a daughter of an Irish AMM queen.  She was raised in  2019. She was open mated away from my main apiary so her worker daughters are a mix of yellow and dark but she will produce 100% AMM drones for the main mating apiary.

The sting in the tail
There is another aspect of honeybee genetics that we should be aware of, sex determination. Whether an individual is male or female is different in honey bees than in mammals. We have seen above that males are produced when the queen lays an unfertilised egg, there is a little more to it though.

There is a gene that determines the sex of bees. There are different alleles, or versions, of this gene. If the allele from the mother (egg) is different to that from the father (sperm) the bee will be female. If they are the same the bee will be male.

Normal Drones. An unfertilised egg will, having only one sex allele, develope as a normal male/drone. There is only one allele and so cannot be different.

Diploid drones. Males can develope from fertilised eggs if the egg and the sperm both have the same sex allele. These drones will not be viable, they contian 32 chromosomes and will not function as a normal male. Worker bees will remove these diploid drones when the egg hatches. The holes left in the brood area result in a pepper pot brood pattern. The worst effects are seen in inbreeding. A brother sister mating will yield only 50% viable brood.

The chances of the two sex alleles being the same are normally low, there are twenty plus versions of the allele at least (I think I have read somewhere that there are over fifty?). By inbreeding the odds of the two alleles being the same become much higher. If we continue to breed from the same closely related group of bees, as in the above example, we will have weak colonies that are suseptable to disease and pests.

We could start with a large population and manage different breeding lines, raising drones from one line each year and alternating in subsequent years. Working in groups with other beekeepers helps here, a larger breeding population will better mainatian genetic diversity.

Also from time to time we can introduce new genetic material by bringing in new queens.

I hope that was a reasonably clear explanation of honeybee genetics and how we can use to select the colonies that we should breed from.

How to transfer bees from a nucleus hive

So you have just obtained your first colony of bees, exciting! What do you do now? Here's a basic list of the steps you need to carry out to get your bees settled into their new home.

You hopefully have completed a beginner's course, these are run by most local BBKA branches. They also hopefully provided you with access to a mentor, someone that will be able to give you advice, answer questions and provide practical help when required. They could have invited you to help them with inspections of their own bees. You might even be able to purchase your first colony from them That's how I acquired my first colony, I "helped" my mentor to graft larva to raise a batch of new queens and bought the colony that built up to strength first.

Your hive should have been built and treated/painted prior to obtaining your bees, spring nucs can develop very quickly and, if they run out of room, they will swarm! They should therefore not be left in the nuc box for very long. You will also need a dummy board, frames with foundation and a feeder and of course a hive stand of some sort in position.

1. Collect your nuc in the evening, when the bees have stopped flying or in the early morning before they start to fly. Make sure that bees can not escape during the journey, use a hive strap or ratchet strap to secure the integrity of the hive/nucleus.
2. When transporting bees, they should be positioned so that the frames are in line with the direction of travel, in this orientation sudden braking will not cause frames to push together, crushing and killing bees, potentially the queen!
3. Place the nuc in position on the hive stand, the entrance should face the direction that your new hive will. 
4. Open the entrance. If your nuc has a disc type entrance, open it fully, do not put it to the queen excluder, the bees in a populous colony will over-heat in warm weather. This a horrible sight to see!
5. Leave the bees to fly and to settle down for a day or two. (This and step 6 are ideal and optional, I have transferred nucs in the rain immediately after relocation with no adverse effects on numerous occasions)  
6. Choose a warm sunny day when the bees are flying well, 
7. Move nuc hive to one side and place your new hive on the stand, with the entrance block in place to reduce the entrance. 
8. Place the dummy board and one frame of foundation in brood box at back. 
9. Open nuc hive and gently smoke your bees, if required, good bees should need minimal smoke, especially when the colony is small. 
10. Lift out the first frame of bees and place in hive, next to the first frame of foundation. Transfer the other frames of bees, making sure that they are the same way round and the same order as in the nuc hive. 
11. Add one frame of foundation at front. Push all frames towards the front of the brood box. 
12. Shake any bees still in the nuc hive into the new hive. If you place the nuc box on it's side a meter or so infront of the new hive, any stray bees left on the nuc will find their way home.
13. Fit crown board and empty super (this will be used to house the feeder). 
14. Fit the hive roof. 
15. Later, the same evening, give the bees a feeder full of syrup, 1kg sugar mixed with 1 litre of water. Place the feeder above the crown board, the super provides the height required to accommodate the feeder. 

Leave the bees to settle for a week or so, on inspection, ensure that the bees have enough room, add frames of foundation next to brood frames, front and back, as the previous ones are drawn out. Continue to feed as required until the brood box is full with drawn out comb. Do not split the brood by placing foundation between frames containing brood and or eggs!

Note: You will need either a second hive or an empty nucleus hive. At some point your bees will prepare to swarm and you should be prepared too! Get your equipment ready now and have a plan.

Good luck with your bees!

Honey bee bait hive

I tried to attract a swarm before I actually had any bees of my own by using lemon grass oil but failed miserably. I didn't have the materials required to attract a swarm. Ideally a bait hive will be an old bee box in which bees have lived previously, it will therefore have propolis and bees wax impregnated into the wood and some old comb.

Results can be improved by using a pheromone attractant, these are available commercially but if you keep bees already they can be prepared yourself: Any one that has a number of hives will have the the  opportunity to evaluate the colonies and differentiate between their traits, if there are colonies that display undesirable traits, be it temper, chalk brood or just not building up as desired, or whatever, has the option to re-queen using eggs or larvae from their other colonies. This requires the removal of the old queen. These can be discarded, or more favourably, they can be used to progress your beekeeping. After dispatching the unwanted, queen she should be deposited in a bottle of alcohol or similar solvent and any other such queens should be added along with any unwanted virgin queens. The resultant tincture is the daubed onto the wood work of the bait hive. This is an excellent swarm attractant!

Queens in alcohol

A farming family attended our branch meeting a couple of years ago, looking to have some bees on their farm. I contacted them and arranged to meet and discuss placing a number of hives there. They showed me around their farm, which was very interesting, they have robots that milk their cows on demand. If you ever get the chance to visit a similar dairy farm you should jump at the opportunity it's fascinating. We eventually chose a suitable site, surrounded on three sides by a small wood, the open side being south facing. Shortly after I placed a couple of nucs there and left them to overwinter. On my second visit I noticed that there was a wild tree colony not thirty feet from my nucs. I had chosen a site that bees had decided was an ideal site too!

Wild tree bees

They were housed in a beech tree that had two trunks that had fused together and, presumably formed a cavity within. The overall girth the the tree isn't very wide so I concluded that the cavity isn't large and the bees would, next year, swarm at the earliest opportunity. I therefore decided to place a bait hive to catch any resultant swarm. I used two old brood combs, two foundation frames and a couple of drawn super frames, the remaining space being filled with foundation less frames along with some of my home made swarm attractant in a BS brood box. The  books say to place a bait hive over one hundred and fifty meters or more from their home hive but I didn't have that luxury, mine was placed just twenty meters away from the tree.  As we all know the bees don't read books so I was cautiously optimistic!

I called at the farm to inspect the nucs that I had placed there earlier last May, the farmer came out to greet me and said that the pest controller had called to deal with a mole infestation two days after my last visit and had pointed out a large swarm of bees flying over the wood where my bees were located. I was certain that any swarm was not from my nucs, they had plenty of room to grow and had newly matted queens heading them, it must be a swarm from the tree. Could they have taken the bait and moved into my hive?

Well, yes they did! There was a lot activity at the hive entrance, with bees coming and going and bringing in lots of pollen, this was a prime swarm headed by a mated queen. On inspection they had drawn out all eleven frames, there were four frames of brood and the rest was very light honey and nectar. I made a note to bring another brood box the following day to give them room to grow. I didn't take any honey from this colony but I will take some from this apiary in May this year if I can, the honey is much lighter in colour than from my existing apiaries. Instead I decided to propagate from these bees, the were very dark in colour but their abdomen banding is grey, indicating that they are Carniolan bees, not what I really want, as I am trying to breed Apis mellifera mellifera. They are however very good bees to work with, being very calm on the comb and as far as I can, tell produce a good honey crop. I will keep them separate from my queen breeding.

I used a Snelgrove board to rear queens from this swarm colony, this is the first time that I have used a Snelgrove board. I now have four daughter colonies from the swarm, two in five frame nucs and two in double five frame nucs. This is despite a ferocious attack from wasps at the end of last season, robbing out nucleus colonies. I shall write a page documenting using the Snelgrove board later this year. I found it easy to use and had very good results, they are easy to make from a crown board although I got mine from an association auction.

The Safest Way To Introduce A Queen

I don't usually have to introduce a queen to a colony of bees: By raising queens, most of my queens emerge into a queen less nucleus hive, made up specifically to enable the queen to be mated. I have though on occasion acquired a mated queen for the purposes of introducing desired genetic material to my breeding programme. These queens therefore are very valuable to me and I therefore want to minimise the likelihood of them being rejected by their new colony.

The first time that I attempted such an introduction was with an AMM queen that I had acquired in-order to evaluate and hoped that she would push forward my progress to breed British Native bees. I made up a nucleus colony of two frames of bees plus stores and introduced the queen in a queen introduction cage. I plugged the exit with candy to delay the release of the queen as is suggested and suspended the cage between the two brood frames. On inspection two days later the cage was empty, the queen having been released, happy days!

Queen cage

However, the following day I found a very sick looking queen on the ground below the entrance to the hive, she was easy to spot as she was marked. The only thing that I could think of to do was to place her back into the cage, with another plug of candy and try again. I checked for any queen cells and found none. Fingers crossed, this time she would be accepted.

No such luck I found her outside the hive three days later, this time she was dead.

If I was going to invest in new queens I needed to find a more reliable way to introduce them into a colony. I searched the web and found a number of pages referring to "push in cages", beekeeping suppliers such as Thornes stock these items (Link) but they are easy to make yourself and they will probably be better ......

They can be made from woven steel mesh (size: 8 mesh). , I found that this supplier (Link) offered "samples" in a size (Large Sample 300mm x 200mm, A4 sized) that enables two good sized cages to be made from one A4 sheet. These are stainless steel and therefore should last a lifetime or more if they are looked after. After use I place mine into the dish washer for a couple of cycles and they come out as new. Galvanised steel mesh would be cheaper though.

Using sharp wire cutters, divide the sheet into two. Then, on each long side make a cut 2cm deep, 2 cm from each end, (2cm is 7 wires). The two cm "edges" can then be folded over to produce a the desired shape, fold the corners and hold these secure by twisting wire through and snipping off the excess. The picture should make that easier to understand.

Queen push in cage

Having removed the queen from the colony to be re-queened, or a nuc made up specifically to receive the new queen,  leave them for eight or nine days. There will then be no larvae with which the bees can make a queen from for themselves, remove any emergency queen cells that they have started.
The introduction can then be carried out.

The idea is that a comb from this colony to be is selected that has emerging brood and some stores, honey and pollen. The comb is shaken or brushed free of bees and the new queen placed the comb, under the cage such that the queen has free run of the area within the cage. The cage should cover some stores and emerging brood. The cage is then pushed firmly into the comb, right to the midrib. This frame is then returned to to hive and left for five days.
During this time the emerging brood will be trapped in the cage with the new queen. They will feed from the available stores and be fed through the cage by their sisters, as the new queen is the only one they have ever known they will feed the new queen also. She will thus take on the scent of the colony and come back into lay, using the cells vacated by the emerging brood. A queen that has been caged and posted for example will shrink in size and stop laying, the bees will not accept her as readily if she doesn't smell like a laying queen.

Inspection after five days should show the queen and by now many nurse bees in the cage, the workers outside if the cage should show no aggression to the queen below, not clinging the the frame or tightly clustering on it. The queen will have laid into the vacant cells and these should be visible.

The cage can now be gently removed, the queen and her attendants will wander off onto the wider comb quite happily and the comb returned and the hive quietly closed up.

This method I have found to be completely reliable, never having a queen rejected.

I will update this page later this year with some pictures and/or a video showing the process.
  

Cheshire Honey

Many beekeepers start keeping bees in-order to have their own honey, not me! I didn't really eat much honey before I kept bees, I still don't. It is embarrassing though when you talk to people about your beekeeping hobby and they ask, as invariably they do, if you have any honey and you tell them no!

Cheshire honey 

My main interest in beekeeping is queen breeding so honey production isn't high on my list of priorities. However, there wouldn't be much interest from other beekeepers in the bees that I breed if they weren't productive. Also the rearing of queens requires strong colonies, these by their very nature produce a surplus of the sticky stuff. It therefore is a fortunate/unfortunate fact that I have had to deal with this by product.

The process of honey removal, I found daunting. My apiaries are not ideal for honey production, they are not accessible by road, I have to carry or barrow supers over uneven ground. I can't do this alone and so have to rely on my not too enthusiastic sons for help.

Then follows the extraction process, what a job this is! I get the stuff everywhere, on the floor, on the work surfaces, up my arms and on my clothes. I currently use a simple two frame tangential extractor, cranked by hand. On one occasion I have almost taken someones head off using this, I was enthusiastically spinning the contraption when my hand slipped from the handle which flew off across the room at a considerable speed. Luckily it missed and no one was harmed.

So, having extracted and filtered this 'liquid gold', what was I to do with it? I could, and did, feed some back to nucleus colonies. Other than that, I was at a loss as to what to do. I bought some jars and gave a few away to family and friends. This was where I was really surprised, a few recipients of my honey disposal/give-away came back and asked for more, for themselves and others too! "It tastes so much better than the stuff we get from the supermarket" they told me. One chap from the allotment site asked "Have you got any of that bl**dy honey left? My wife keeps on at me to get some more".

It's strange but my dislike for the stuff has changed, I have a certain pride and satisfaction that my bees create this wonderful food that is so appreciated by others. I am careful to ensure that what I pass on to others is the best that I can produce, I don't want to undo all of the hard work that my bees have invested by presenting their honey in anything other than the best possible manner that I can. I use settling tanks after filtering so ensuring that fine pieces of wax are not introduced to the jars and that small bubbles settle in the tank, this way there is no foam or scum in the top of the jar. I use 3/4 lb hexagonal jars and attach a label proudly stating that the contents are Cheshire Honey.

I managed to acquire a honey warming cabinet this year. This has really enabled me to make huge steps forward in my presentation. I can now safely liquify crystallised honey. This lead to me thinking that I could, or should, expand my range by making some soft set honey. This has a longer shelf life in that it won't set hard after jarring and therefore won't need to be re-warmed before giving it away or selling it: Yes selling! I have found that there is a demand for this stuff and people are willing to pay for it, fancy that!

I researched soft set honey on the web and decided to follow the instructions given on the site The Apiarist. The process basically involves warming crystallised honey to 50°C over 24 to 36 hours when it will have fully melted to clear honey. It's best not to use honey that is very dark, this will give a muddy brown product that isn't very attractive. A seed stock (5% of the total weight) of soft set honey can be added and mixed into the batch of honey after filtering and allowing to cool to about 35°C. At this temperature the seed crystals will not dissolve and the mix will be mobile enough to thoroughly mix.
I bought some local soft set honey to use as an initial seed stock rather than grinding down crystallised honey in a pestle and mortar, much easier! I save three jars worth of each batch to use in subsequent batches.
I use a cordless drill to gently do the mixing, this saves a lot of effort too. The bucket of honey is then allowed to cool to below 12°C (easy in the colder months of the year) and stirred at 12 hour intervals. this produces soft set honey. Re-warming the bucket of honey to 35ºC to reduces the viscosity and enables it to be bottled relatively it easily, relatively!
Full and very clear instructions are available at the above link.

Soft set honey

The resulting product is rather nice, smooth on the palate, with all of the taste and aroma of untreated natural honey with the bonus of being easy to spoon out of the jar and not liable to set hard, lovely.

The queen that refused to go

I had a lovely new queen mated in a five frame nuc on my main apiary last year. She wintered well and despite the poor spring of 2018 she developed well. I placed another 5 frame brood box below the colony containing drawn comb containing a little honey and they took off! In what seemed like no time at all, they had expanded to two brood boxes and two supers. I was really pleased with their progress until one inspection day. Upon opening the hive I was greeted by a mob (30-40) very angry bees, they flew straight for my leg, abdomens bent over, intent on stinging me. This is something that I'm not used to, all of my colonies to date have been reasonably docile. Thats not to say that I don't get an odd sting or two of course. I can usually put any stings down to my own fault rather than that of the bees. Copious amounts of smoke to my leg area and an assertive attitude to the inspection resulted in the job being completed without further incident.

This colony continued to expand and I added a further 2 supers and then another one, at each inspection, although I wasn't always stung, it seemed like it was in a battle of wills. At this time my back was playing up, I had injured it the previous year and so lifting heavy supers became a bit of a chore, I needed help! My less than enthusiastic youngest son reluctantly agreed to give me a hand with 'my number one colony'. I had warned him that these bees were a little on the tetchy side, he wasn't deterred by my warning. "They don't bother me!" was his macho response.
We removed the top two supers together, then the next two and the final one, queen excluder removed and we were into the brood nest. With double brood colonies I tend to take the top one off, briefly look at the base of the combs before placing this aside in an upturned roof. This way I can get in indication of whether or not the bees are preparing to swarm, usually swarm cells in such a colony are built between the brood boxes. There were sealed queen cells! This, according to the books means that, almost certainly, the colony has swarmed. I needed to try to find the queen, in the vain hope that she was still there and I could salvage the situation. I proceeded to remove each frame from the lower brood box, shaking bees off after determining that the queen wasn't on the frame. The bees were determined to assert their authority and proceeded to fly up, ping off my veil and bounce off of my hands, I fought back, puffing smoke and shaking frames, moving 'with purpose' but as gently as possible, I read somewhere not to show fear, does that really work? It was then that I heard my son over the loud buzzing say "Dad..........Dad..........Dad, I'm feeling ........er ....... a bit............intimidated!" I told him to move away if he was scared, to which he replied "I'm not scared, I was just letting you know......" I chuckled to myself (he's so macho!) as I carried on.

Both brood boxes inspected, no queen seen and no eggs either, I had always seen this particular queen at every inspection, some queens are elusive and are rarely seen unless you make a conservative effort, so I concluded that she had indeed left. This was not necessarily a negative for me, the colony was still really strong, it was in swarming mode, geared up to make queen cells and I was due to do queen rearing next week, this would be my cell builder! I therefore took down all queen cells and put the hive back together. Seven days later I would inspect again to remove the any emergency queen cells, rearrange the hive and introduce grafted larvae from my selected breeder queen. Happy days.

Seven days later and my son was ........... nowhere to be seen! I managed to take the supers off myself and found the hive to be ......... full of eggs and larvae. Further searching revealed the old queen proudly parading across the comb, I'm sure I heard her laughing as she walked around the side of the frame away from me: Grafting day was postponed. I admit to cursing just a little as I reassembled the hive but not so loud as the bees could hear.

The following week, I confronted my nemesis again. I could not find any eggs, queen or queen cells. What was going on? Had she left after the last inspection? I have, previously, had queens swarm when I have found nearly sealed queen cells, removed the queen cells and on the next inspection found the queen to be gone, having left no queen cells, eggs or larvae. I assume that they had made their mind up to go, thought that everything was in-order in the home hive and hadn't given my late intrusion another thought. This was another case of the same surely? I decided to reinspect the whole hive, nothing in the brood nest, searching further though I found a huge queen sealed queen cell on the outer most honey frame, two frames away from the brood nest. It was of course sealed, was this a supersedure cell? She had certainly gone, swarmed or been dispatched by her daughters that were probably as fed up with her as I was? I took the cell down, I didn't want to propagate from this queen but I did want to use the colony's resources to raise new queens from my selected stock, it was back to plan-A, use it as a cell raiser.

Another seven days later, I was expecting the bees, being queen-less, to be in a bad mood. Not so! They were reasonable well behaved and I soon found out why, there were eggs, larvae and a laughing queen present. I boxed them up and decided to let them get on with it. I didn't do proper hive inspections on this colony for the rest of the season, I would take a look at the supers and split the two brood boxes to look for queen cells in the bottom of the  top box, none were found so I assumed all was well.

I took off three supers of honey from this hive, later than from my other colonies, leaving them with two partially filled supers above a crown board. From the weight of the brood boxes they had plenty of stores to last them through to the ivy flow when I would assess them for feeding requirements. I was really pleased an almost, leave it alone, hive had given me my biggest honey crop of the year and a very nice honey it was too.

After the varroa treatments I did notice the odd wasp or two entering this colony when visiting the apiary but thought that they were strong enough to cope. A few weeks later though I discovered that my lassie faire attitude had been wrong. The hive was completely robbed out, the supers were empty, as were the brood boxes. There was no evidence of any dead brood but just a small cluster of dead bees, about the size of my hand, in the centre of the cluster was my yellow marked queen. She wasn't laughing any more! I lamented over the loss of this queen and her colony, due obviously to the neglect of my duties as a beekeeper and, let's face it, down-right cowardice! I sealed up the hive entrance and made a promise to  myself never to neglect my duties again, however many stings I should receive.

At least ten days later I dismantled the hive and took it home to salvage and sterilise any usable frames and to clean up the boxes. At home I discovered a few live bees walking on the outer-most frames, further investigation  revealed that the dead cluster wasn't dead after all, the queen, although  not laughing anymore, was alive too! What should I do? The colony was clearly too small to make it through winter. I decided to put them into an Apidea that thankfully I had neglected to remove the comb from, I had cleaned out all but this last one. I drizzled some honey into the comb and carefully transferred the queen and her remaining entourage. I took them into my house, sealed up of course, for a day. After a day in the warm and with a source of food they were buzzing to get out. As luck, or maybe bad fortune would have it, I had another colony that had become queen-less after varroa treatment and so decided to introduce this queen under a mesh cage on a frame of emerging brood from another hive to the queen-less one. To my relief and amazement she started to lay again and so the field bees began to bring pollen into the hive. I have fed them and given fondant as the colder weather came in.

They are, in my opinion, the least likely my colonies to make it through to the spring but having said that, would you bet against this particular queen?

I may well be facing my old nemesis again next year and probably without my macho son.

Tip: Have you ever made a nuc up, kept in the same apiary, only to find that most of the bees had returned to their home hive?

Have you ever made up a nuc that was kept in the same apiary, only to find that most of the bees had flown home, leaving your nuc short of nurse bees? I have! I remedied this by setting up a ramp to the front of the nuc, as in a Taranov swarm method. Remove two or three frames (from the same hive from which the nuc was made from) of open brood, these will have a high proportion of nurse bees, shake the bees from these frames onto the ramp that you have set up. The nurse bees, having not flown from their hive, will have no idea of where home is and will move upwards towards the nuc entrance. Field bees however will fly back to their home hive before entering the nuc.

I haven't done this yet but I see no reason why this method could not be used to make drone free nucs up for selective breeding. By placing a queen excluder between the floor and brood box any drones shaken from the frames would be prevented from entering the nuc. Indeed any queen shaken from the frames would also be prevented entry, something that can happen when making up nucleus colonies. Once the nurse bees have settled inside, the floor and queen excluder are removed, cleared of bees and the floor returned to the nuc with the entrance sealed. Poly nucs can have an entrance disc fitted that has a queen excluder function, this should work too but would take longer for the bees to enter, the effective entrance being that much smaller.