A story that interests us all: How to get highly productive queen bees.

The quality of queen bees is of great importance for family productivity. The more the uterus can lay eggs, the higher the rate of development of the family, and more bees can collect nectar and pollen.

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The same uterus in different periods of his life puts an uneven number of ovules. The younger the uterus, the more it puts them.

In bee colonies with an annual uterus, there is an average of 4.4 breeding frames in autumn, 2.6 frames for two-year-old bees and only 1.5 frames for three-year-olds.

Consequently, the one-year-old uterus placed 69.2% more eggs than two-year-olds and 193.3% more than a three-year-old uterus. A similar pattern is usually observed in the spring.

It should also be taken into account that the older the uterus is, the more they lay unfertilized eggs, from which drones emerge.

Families of bees with an old uterus are more conservative and, ultimately, less productive than families with a young uterus.

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Given all this, beekeepers strive to keep their queens no more than two years. They replace the queens annually. With the annual change of the uterus, in general, the natural swarm of bees does not occur and beekeepers do not have to perform a series of jobs related to the swarm. The formation of new families is carried out artificially.

The young uterus in autumn lays more eggs than the old ones, as a result of which many young bees grow and families tolerate wintering better.

The annual change of the uterus ultimately contributes to a significant increase in the productivity of bee colonies.

The young uterus is required in the apiary not only to replace the old ones, but also to form new families, as well as nuclei with replacement uterus.

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It should also be noted that some of the queens (up to 30%) die during mating flights and when planted in families. Therefore, in each apiary, a large number of young queens have to be raised annually.