>
> >  I am wondering what the theoretical minimum number of queen lines you
> would need to have an apiary be self-sufficient without resulting in
> inbreeding.
>

Hi Trish, Dr Rob Page published theoretical calculations some years ago as
to the number of queen lines to maintain in a closed population.  You can
look up the details, but as I recall, if you grafted off of ~30 queen lines
each year, adequate diversity of sex alleles would b maintained.

>
> >In short, bee gender is determined by heterozygous alleles at several key
> spots on their chromosomes.
>

My understanding is that there is only one "spot" involved--the sex
determination gene.  When that gene has two different alleles present, that
then activates the "feminize" gene.

>So... my question is for those who have raised queens, what's a minimum
> number of queen lines you have used without ending up with lots of spotty
> brood from inbreeding?


I graft from a minimum of 26 breeder queens from different yards per
season--I don't keep track of queen bloodlines.  I name my breeders by
letter, so when I get to "Z" I know that I've got 26.  I've done this for
years, and still get VERY solid brood patterns.

Last spring I tried a one-time bottlenecking of grafting predominately from
only a few apparently mite-resistant queens, so wondered whether I'd see
signs of inbreeding this season.  I didn't, but did go back to my 26.

In my area, I have strong reason to suspect that my stock provides the vast
majority of the drones when I'm mating queens.  One of those reasons is
that we bring back a thousand hives chock full of drones from almonds, and
flood our mating yards.  Research by ARS demonstrated that this will result
in very high control of matings.

In your case, Trish, it will be difficult to maintain a "pure" queen line
without the use of II.


-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html