Beekeeping industry: Dethrone lazy queens for healthy hives

JUST taking a guess at how ­effective queen bees are at keeping their hives clean is no longer acceptable, a leading apiarist has said.

Busy at it: Lindsay Bourke from Australian Honey Products checks bee hives in Tasmania. Picture: Heath Holden

JUST taking a guess at how ­effective queen bees are at keeping their hives clean is no longer acceptable, a leading apiarist has said.

Lindsay Bourke, from Launceston, in Tasmania, is encouraging beekeepers to adopt rapid testing methods to identify queens most capable of protecting broods from established biological threats.

Examples are American foul brood as well as the varroa destructor mite, the latter which is yet to make its way to Australia, but is found in every other major beekeeping area in the world.

The pest killed 95-100 per cent of unmanaged or wild honey bees within four years of infestation in the US and Europe.

“We all want queens who have less brood diseases,” Mr Bourke said. “Bees with rapid hygienic behaviour will uncap (a diseased cell) and clean it out before it becomes more infectious.”

Mr Bourke, who is president of the Tasmanian Beekeepers Association, uses a technique that involves freezing a section of the brood with liquid nitrogen to identify queens with the traits he wants to genetically promote.

The test takes 24 hours and the effectiveness of the queen is gauged on how many cells she uncaps in the test section during that period.

“Not a cap left would be a perfect result – 95 per cent would be a wonderful queen to breed from, even 90 per cent is good enough,” he said. “Everyone should be doing it. Guessing is no good anymore.”

AgriFutures Australia research and innovation manager Melanie Bradley said protecting biosecurity and bolstering healthy queen bee breeding lines was a crucial focus for the bee industry.

“The honey bee and pollination sector is acutely aware that varroa is very much on our doorstep,” Dr Bradley said.

“Anything that can be done to ensure a healthy and profitable pollination sector must be considered.”

A video explaining the technique can be found at: youtube.com/watch?v=AhhYLbmk9 Mo&feature= youtube