Category Archives: Bee Breeding

Native Irish Honey Bee Book

This book is a collaborative work with contributions from expert beekeepers and scientists throughout Ireland.

Native Irish Honey Bee Book
Native Irish Honey Bee Book

It contains everything you need to know about the Native Irish Honey Bee – from evolution to genetics and into the future with conservation and ‘how to’ sections from commercial beekeepers.

Includes a practical section with step by step instructions on queen rearing and bee-breeding techniques.

Click here to re-watch the book launch

Click here to buy the Native Irish Honey Bee Book

Perfect Supersedure

Supersedure is a characteristic of the native Irish honey bee. It is where the bees replace an ageing or waning queen without swarming.

Perfect supersedure is where the old honey bee queen obligingly remains in-situ, laying to the best of her abilities, until the new queen is up and running – before gracefully fizzling out.

This is a sought-after trait for obvious reasons and if you find it in one of your colonies you should definitely factor it in to your bee improvement assessments. Click here for Bee Improvement and to download Assessment sheets.

Here are some fuzzy photo’s of a perfect supersedure in one of our hives yesterday (20.5.19)

Native Irish Honey Bee Supersedure

Click here for Fighting Queen Bees

Click here for Piping Queen Bees

Click here for How to Improve your Bees

Click here for more about the life cycle of honey bees

Click here for more about the Queen Bee

Click here for Swarm Control

Click here for Swarm Prevention

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Remote Bee Hive Monitoring

Remote hive monitoring by Arnia is space age technology for bees – all linked up to a central hub on the mother ship over the mobile phone network.
Of course there is no substitute for visiting the bees but a system like this could be very useful not only in preparing your next visit but also monitoring the results of your efforts from a safe distance.
A road test would be handy!

Continue reading Remote Bee Hive Monitoring

How to Breed Varroa Resistant Bees

It is well known that some colonies of bees have traits such as grooming or hygienic behaviour which make them better able to cope with Varroa. Pinpointing such colonies with the aim of selectively breeding from them can be a challenge. There are several  different methods and they range from the meticulous to the downright ruthless. Continue reading How to Breed Varroa Resistant Bees