Keeping the queen bee chilled in an indoor refrigeration unit makes storage more stable and less labor intensive
A Washington State University study found that keeping the queen bees chilled in an indoor cold room made the practice of “queen banking,” which stores excess queens in the spring and restocks hives in the fall, more stable and labor-intensive. I found it to be irrelevant. It may also help enhance the survival of bees in the face of climate change.
In a paper published in the Journal of Apicultural Research, researchers compared a queen bank stored in a refrigerated unit with a queen bank stored outdoors in a conventional manner and an “unbanked” control group. They found that queens kept at low temperatures had higher survival rates and required less maintenance than queens kept outdoors.
This research and potential future improvements could be another piece of the ultimate puzzle to reduce the annual loss of bee colonies, says senior author Brandon, assistant professor of entomology at WSU. Hopkins said.
“A lot of bee loss is a matter of queen quality,” Hopkins said. “If there is a way to increase the number of available queens or the stability of queens from year to year, it will help the number of colonies to survive the winter in good health.”
In the beekeeping industry, queen bee producers often “store” queen bees by keeping them in small cages during the summer. These small cages are then placed in large colonies with many workers to care for the caged queens, with up to 200 queens per bank.A bank of 100 queens. are worth more than $5,000, and producers may have 10-20 banks on hand.
For this study, the team prepared 18 banks with 50, 100, and 198 queens per bank. The refrigerated bank matched the survival rate of the outdoor group, with 100 banks having a higher survival rate, with his 78% of queen bees surviving 6 weeks of storage compared to 62% in the outdoor group. Queen bees from both groups were of the same quality and displayed similar health status. The cooled queen bank also requires less maintenance.
Beekeepers need bee queens to maintain colonies that pollinate their crops. Demand for queens soars in the spring. That’s when beekeepers recoup losses from the previous year.
Queen production cannot be stopped once the Queen Producers meet the demand. Growers can bank extra queen bees to meet the future needs of beekeepers.
Hopkins said Queens can’t produce at high temperatures. Banks are keeping inventories on hand for when demand returns in the fall.
Maintaining a supply of queen bees that beekeepers can afford is becoming increasingly difficult. The majority of U.S. queen bee producers are based in California, where rising temperatures and wildfires are becoming more common.
“I’ve heard that queen bee growers in California have a hard time keeping their queens in the bank when temperatures hit 100 degrees in the summer,” Hopkins said. “It’s a little scary to bank 80% of the Queen’s supply of the country in a place prone to wildfires, smoke and high temperatures.”
Hopkins was surprised how well the experiment worked, given the challenges of Queen Banking.
“It’s art,” he said. “It requires a fair amount of maintenance, skill and care in managing, supplying and moving resources.”
The team found that in refrigeration units, bees do well on food alone and without human intervention.
Original: Indoor ‘queen banks’ could help beekeepers deal with climate change
Than: Washington State University
