British Beekeepers Association

Discussion about poor queen mating and laying

Queen with Attendant Workers

History

I started keeping bees in 1963 and at one time had 130 colonies, and have always raised my own queens on a regular basis. For a number of reasons I had a spell where I had no bees myself for about 15 years until restarting in 2002, but retained interest in my local Association, and continued to attend meetings. At one stage I could expect a success rate of getting queens mated from a sealed cell well in excess of 90%, but since returning to active beekeeping that success rate has dropped alarmingly, in my own experience to 50% or less.

When restarting I obtained 5 colonies from various sources and rigourously culled the poorer queens. In doing this I realised there was a problem in achieving the level of successful matings I had previously enjoyed.

In the Dec 2004 issue of BBKA News I wrote an article on my experiences, and asked if the problems were related to varroa. I received several replies and these fell largely into two groups, those who had kept bees for around 15 years or more and agreed with me that there was a problem, and those with less experience who indicated that my experiences were “normal”, which is understandable if that is all they had known. One person who regularly raised a large number of queens appeared to have a success rate as low as 15%.

I received references to research work that had been done abroad, and there were indications from what I considered to be reliable sources that varroa and it’s treatment may be a contributory factor, and in a variety of ways.

Drones that were parasitized by varroa as larvae may have reduced sperm and lower viability if, indeed, they managed to survive to sexual maturity, and it appears that some treatments may accumulate in beeswax, and possibly cause the following problems:-

Reduced sperm count in drones.

Reduced queen mating success.

Reduced queen weight.

High queen mortality.

Physical abnormalities in queens.

I am not qualified to make comment on the above findings and they may well be superceded by later information. We should also remember that the work was done abroad and may have involved treatments that are not cleared for use in the U.K.

I had become convinced that varroa was the cause because the queen mating problem appeared to have gone up the country at roughly the same rate as the spread of varroa, and there were no problems before it’s arrival. I accept that in normal circumstances something occasionally goes wrong, but not at the current rate. If you think about it bees will not survive many generations with such a low reproductive rate, and we must have had spells of weather during the time bees have been in this country that were very much worse for successful mating than we have had over the last few years.

Virgin Queen with Deformed wings—Photo taken in Yorkshire