I cannot let Medhat's comment"no honey no money" in relation to ranking Hygienic Behaviour so far behind honey production in breeding selection criteria, go by without a dissenting view. He is inferring that the selection of  bees that prioritise health rather than hoarding in their daily activities will affect honey production so badly that the economic viability of the outfit will suffer. 

Bullshit!(I'm an Aussie so I'm allowed to say that!)

I can say that with confidence because of personal experience.

For most of my beekeeping career, my stock, like that of most other beekeepers here, has been derived from queens sourced from a breeding program using productivity as the number 1 selection criterion,just as Medhat described, with disease susceptibility only featuring in that AFB hives were destroyed immediately if they were ever seen. Hygienic Behaviour was never measured or tested, (although that may have changed very recently). I even participated in this breeding program for many years.

Bear in mind that antibiotic use here is not practiced (its illegal), and varroa, tracheal, EFB, N.ceranae and SHB are not present, so AFB is the biggest problem we face.

Over time, I gradually became disillusioned about our breeding program for the simple reason that AFB incidence in our industry remained essentially unchanged from the time when I entered the industry a long time ago (and variously estimated at 5 to 10%). I should add of course that the bees were very productive and good to work with, although AFB was always somewhere in the background. So I put my suspicions to the test and addressed the issue personally. I withdrew from the breeding program, (and no doubt my colleagues there were glad to see me go), tested ALL my hives for Hygienic Behaviour, and embarked on a new breeding selection regime. In this, ONLY hives which tested hygienic were even ranked for breeding selection (including productivity). The breeders are maintained using Instrumental insemination to mate daughters of selected hygienic queens to semen from drones produced by selected hygienic queens.

Results? In the first year the hygienic behaviour expression in production hives headed by open mated  queens from our local area went from 7% to 80%! AFB incidence virtually disappeared (2 hives out of 600), chalkbrood almost never seen. And honey production? No noticeable difference. This exact experience was repeated with 2 other commercial beekeepers operating in completely different areas who came along for the ride at the same time.

In theory, honey production should improve in healthier bees. The explanation for no significant change lies in the other , more significant impacts on productivity caused by for example, seasonal factors, competing production activity within our enterprises (due to low profitability in honey production all 3 enterprises have changed $ earning focus during this time). None of us actually measured per hive honey production since we all measure it at the enterprise level, but then this was not an academic, statistically controlled experiment, but instead a real world, "put your money where your mouth is" commercial change.

For my money, breeding selection is a 2 stage process. Firstly they MUST be hygienic or they don't qualify to be ranked. Then all the other selection criteria are ranked. Simple and easy. Honey production still happens!

Yes, when we first made this change, some of our best producing queens, which under the old selection regime would have been chosen as breeders, didn't make the cut, but it made no difference to our honey production at the enterprise level. And we still have bees that are nice to work with.

And a footnote while we are on the subject of Hygienic Behaviour testing. The pinprick method is perfectly adequate, perhaps even perfect, for the practicing beekeeper, at any enterprise level. Agreed that its not adequate for absolute certainty as required by the researchers in statistically controlled trials or breeding programs, but if the bees fail to remove pin killed brood, then you can be almost certain that they are NOT hygienic, and that's the information most beekeepers need.
The test is simple, quick, and requires nothing extraordinary in the way of expertise or equipment. Any beekeeper can do it 

PeterD   

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