Some time ago, we talked about how queens are evaluated.  https://entomology.ces.ncsu.edu/apiculture/queen-disease-clinic/ for a link.  Dr. Tarpy has a service where sister or daughter queens of your breeders (cuz the queens are not going to survive the evaluation process) can be evaluated (for a fee) on the basis of how much sperm, whether there are viruses or nosema spores, and on morphology.  

Of course, none of this is evaluating key colony attributes that a beekeeper will want to influence via breeding, such as degree of defensiveness or ability to store honey or survive the winter.

Here is a different tack on that (link:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241065259_Collective_personalities_in_honeybee_colonies_are_linked_to_colony_fitness/download ), which is to evaluate colony personality.  This is a far cry from morphology!  In fact, this would fall under phenology...

But enough vocabulary.  It's a densely written paper looking at colony behaviors like defensive response (triggered by banana smell and a brick dropping on the hive), comb repair, runniness on the comb, as well as number of foragers and number of dead bees taken out in a week.

Curiously, or maybe obviously, both weight gain and colony survival were well predicted by number of foragers observed per minute.

Is anyone using aspects of colony-level behavior to select their queens?  Is anyone finding it useful to measure or track things like foragers or defensive response level?

             ***********************************************
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