Mating station (beekeeping)
A mating location is a location for young, unmated queen bees and drones of the same breed of bees for the targeted breeding of honey bees .
description
At a mating station, small mating colonies, each with around 1000 workers and a young, unmated queen bee, are set up in so-called mating boxes - but without drones. From here, the queen bee is to undertake her wedding flights to drone collection points for two to three weeks , where up to 20,000 drones gather at a height of around ten meters. There, each queen bee is mated by around 15 drones.
For this purpose, fathers of the same breed of bees are set up some distance away, with their many pure-bred drones to take care of the paternal genetic makeup. A high density of drones on the mating site shortens the flight distance and flight time of the queens during mating flights and thus has a positive effect on the mating result, studies by the Kirchhain Bee Institute showed.
The mating sites are located in an area that is isolated from other honey bees so that they do not mate with unwanted drones from another bee breed. Ideally, the locations are protected by a bee-free protective belt with a minimum radius of 7 kilometers. In addition, the apiaries can be stocked with pure-bred colonies of the same breed of bees outside the protective belt.
The mating boxes contain a feeding trough for feed dough and three small plastic frames with honeycombs. After two to three weeks, the beekeeper can use these brood combs to check whether mating has worked and the queen has laid eggs.
Types of occupancy according to geographic location
Depending on the geographical location, mating sites are so-called land mating sites (inland), island mating sites (on North or Baltic Sea islands, without their own bees and at a correspondingly large distance from the mainland) or high mountain mating sites (in isolated high mountain valleys, without their own bees).
Land mating offices
Land mating points enable beekeepers to breed better mating, although the origin of the drones is often not unequivocal.
Island vouchers
Island moorings are safer due to their isolated location in the sea. For example, on the Frisian islands of Borkum , Baltrum , Juist , Langeoog , Norderney , Spiekeroog , Sylt and Wangerooge for pure breeding of Carnica bees, respectively Langeneß and Hooge, and in the Baltic Sea on Ruden and Greifswalder Oie for Buckfast bees . Since 2015 there has also been an island mating station for the dark European bee ( Apis mellifera mellifera ) on Nordstrandischmoor off the North Frisian coast.
High mountain registration points
High mountain breeding stations (called high mountain breeding stations in Switzerland) are located in isolated valleys without their own bees. They are surrounded by a protective belt at least seven kilometers wide without apiaries. In addition, the apiaries can be stocked with pure-bred colonies of the respective bee breed outside the protective belt.
Job types according to function
Line entry point
As a rule, breeder rings maintain their own evidence centers for inbred lines whose pure-bred drone colonies come from the same performance-tested drone grandmother. The selection of these sire lines follows a breeding plan, which is supposed to improve certain characteristics and at the same time keep the diversity of the inbred lines as broad as possible. Among other things, the queens are mated for a series of rings on line mating points.
Landrace registration office
In contrast, economic queens for bee colonies who are supposed to bring in a honey harvest are mated at locations for “refined land races” . These locations are easier to manage and do not have quite as high demands, a small proportion of hybrid drones are accepted.
Receipts in the German-speaking countries
Austria
There are secure mountain moorings in Austria. A high number of unsafe flat land areas (Vienna, Burgenland), areas with protection radii shortened by state borders (Carinthia, Vienna, Styria, Lower Austria) and protected areas that were only prescribed by the provincial governments with radii of 3 km seem problematic.
Switzerland
Naturally, most of the registration points in Switzerland are so-called high mountain registration points.
- The world's largest mellifera breeding program is organized for the Mellifera bee in Switzerland, with over 5000 Mellifera queens annually. These are listed on five line registration points and 22 breed registration points.
- For the Buckfast bee , over 3000 Buckfast queens are listed annually on four locations.
- For the Carnica bee , queens are listed on five line locations and 17 breed locations.
Today's necessity
For many decades, mating sites offered the only option for targeted mating in beekeeping, which is related to the special mating behavior of honey bees, see wedding flight , drone assembly point and parthenogenesis . Even today, the majority of all bred queen bees are listed for mating on island or high mountain mating sites. To do this, the beekeepers must bring or send the mating colonies to the mating station and, after successful mating, have them picked up or sent back.
For this reason, the queen bees are now instrumentally inseminated , especially in regions without island mating sites or high mountain mating sites . However, this requires a considerably greater amount of work, a corresponding skill and cost-intensive tools such as stereo magnifying glasses, insemination equipment and anesthesia equipment. Even with instrumental insemination, the young queen is kept in a mini colony until the result (egg-laying) is successful.
literature
- Gilles Fert, Klaus Nowottnick: Queen breeding . Leopold Stocker Verlag, Graz 2013, ISBN 978-3-7020-1400-1 .
Web links
- Registration points in Switzerland
- Breed and line breeding stations , mellifera.ch / Verein Schweizerischer Mellifera Bienenfreunde (VSMB), accessed on July 18, 2016
- Mating stations , Buckfastimkerverband Schweiz (BIVS), accessed on July 18, 2016
- Mating stations , Swiss Carnica Association (SCIV), accessed on July 18, 2016
- Registration sites in Germany
- Mating sites on the Frisian Islands , accessed on July 18, 2016
- State-recognized registration points in Bavaria , accessed on October 1, 2017
- Recognized locations in Hessen , accessed on October 1, 2017
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b The location as a "hotel of the hour" for the queen bee. On: mellifera.ch from July 18, 2016
- ↑ Zuchtgemeinschaft Dunkle Biene Nord: The island mooring point Nordstrandischmoor. On: inselbelegstelle-dunkle-biene.de , accessed on July 22, 2016
- ↑ Vienna Beekeeping Act. On: wien.gv.at of October 19, 2000
- ↑ Lower Austrian Protected Area Ordinance for pure breeding registration offices. On: ris.bka.gv.at of March 14, 1995
- ↑ Ordinance with which it is determined which breed of bees may be kept within a radius of the mating station "Johannsenruhe". LGBl. No. 41/2001 of 6 June 2001
- ^ Breed stations and line stations , mellifera.ch, July 18, 2016
- ^ Buckfast beekeeping association Switzerland: mating sites. On: buckfastimker.ch , accessed on July 22, 2016
- ↑ Swiss Carnica Beekeeping Association: Documentation . ( Memento of the original from July 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. On: apimedi.ch , accessed on July 22, 2016
