Breeding Report 2002

I started transferring around May 2002 without any problem.  Building up came along with changing results due to uncertain weather.  I stopped transferring at the end of July.  The breeding went well this year.  In September 2002 I prepared 50 strong production populations and 10 smaller populations for winter.  All 60 populations must be strong enough to survive the winter.

The Varroa infection this year was very low again.  The so-called alcohol washing method showed an infection of 0% to 8%.  The 8% infection was shown at the end of August.  The alcohol washing method gives a real and reliable picture of the Varroa infection in a population.

It was the sixth year this year that my bees survived Varroa without any treatment with miticides.  The shorter breed cycle of the A.m. lamarkii (Egyptian bee) is evident.  In the breeding stove I could compare the lamarkii with other lines: the lamarkii came out 21 hours sooner then my other lines.

During transferring of the larvae I noticed several times on the turn out of bees containing a Varroa that the not full-grown white Varroa was already bitten off during cleaning of the cell.

This year also I purchased some new material.  Amongst them are some lamarkii´s again.

To my opinion is selective breeding is good for the health and size of my populations.

The alcohol washing method shows that are still a little Varroa present, which you can count with your eyes in high season (August).  Much more important is the fact that there are almost no deformed workers.  Counting showed that there were less then 20 deformed workers in a few populations.  Most populations did not have any deformed wings workers at all.

Job van Praagh mentioned in one of his lectures that there different methods to handle the Varroa problem.  One of those methods is the so called James Bond approach: "Live or let die" .  It seemed that I use this method, because when a population gets to much Varroa I kill the Queen and give the population another queen.

Material from Cees Haans has been mated with four different lines.  These Queens are all daughters from the TG0152.  They are doing very well and did not show any or very low Varroa infections.

The following year there will be 20 colonies, daughters of the queen JP0198 on the fertilization station De Eemshaven.  This queen is the successor of the JP0011.  Look for the pedigrees of the most interesting Queens in the European Reports.  The best queens will be selected in spring 2003 for further breeding.

Joost Peschier.