South Texas beekeeping

Now that I better understand your post, I’d like to say that a II Queen will help, but you will eventually need to requeen as new generation of Queens will be more and more Africanized.

I would curious to know how much time a II queen buys you when compared to a well bred naturally insemenated queen.

Should be about the same for both. Reliable offspring for the life of that queen or until she swarms. When she is replaced by an F1 queen, it will depend on which drones the F1 mates with. She is going to mate with 20-30 drones. If the DCA has 80% africanized males, she might have a lot of feisty offspring. Her F2 daughter will have offspring which have drifted further still.

I think some parts of Texas require re-queening every year, to avoid this drift. San Diego requires urban beekeepers to requeen every 2 years. You could probably do pretty well for 3 years if you had a good queen and good swarm prevention. But I guess we have to do what we are told, don’t we? :wink:

AS Dawn
Daughter OK
Grandaughter not.
F2 aggression is common here in the UK because our native black bee does not mix well with the hotchpotch of Carniolan/Italian stock that a lot of hobby beekeepers keep.
I should Imagine such aggression is a mere bagatelle compared to Africanisation but I have had to tackle one colony with two suits on and welders gloves.

I thought , I’d edit and repost as the first post didn’t really make much sense.
I have never encountered africanised bees and I was offering the possibility of sourcing II queens as an alternative to losing queens in the post from far away.
Yes the gene pool would be smaller but I guess it depends what you are using those more expensive II queens for. A hobby beekeeper is interested in his queen providing viable bees to grow his colony and produce a crop of honey till he re-queens two year later.
If you are using queens to breed then you don’t want that genetic diversity. Infact some queens are inseminated with their own drones to narrow that gene pool even further.
As for guaranteeing drone quality…you breed them yourself

On the subject of II Queens I was doing some reading and found this - an argument for not using II Queens

The same could be said for other traits that the colony has and the more patrilines there are the wider the variety of “specialised” bees.
But II has a place. How do you think the wide availability of VSH bees was developed in the USA?
Have look here http://www.swindonhoneybeeconservation.org.uk/research/
and see whether you think II queens are a bad thing

I’m not saying there is no place but if you’re lucky enough not to need it nature provides the better option.

Indeed. Thank heavens we don’t have africanised bees here. Just black ones:)

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Would any beekeepers in the South Texas region be interested in maintaining their colonies on a ranch property located about 10 miles South of Laredo on hwy 83?

There is access to water via maintained water tank and also via Creek and very close proximity to Rio Grande river. Access to the river also provides plenty of flowering foliage and there are also nearby farms that would benefit from pollination.

We are seeking a mutual relationship… you would have free access to the large acreage to maintain 1 or multiple colonies in exchange for documentation and maintenance of healthy bee hives on the property. Owner is also willing to grow large wild flower tracks to benefit bee population. Please send an email to cj @ cjvsolutions . com if you are interested.