The "best queens" are those raised by your own bees

In this wonderful world of beekeeping and honeybee biology, there's a deep-rooted appreciation for the queens that nature itself produces. 

Many enthusiasts and researchers think that the most admirable queens are those which are naturally bred and reared by the bees. Such queens emerge from complex social and evolutionary processes developed over generations inside the hive. They are a reflection of the colony’s collective adaptation and resilience, embodying traits shaped through natural selection. Unlike queens that have been bred through artificial means by human beings, including grafting or selective breeding, these naturally reared queens bear traits that have been refined through evolution to give them their best chances of flourishing, adapting, and keeping their colonies healthy against changes in the natural environment.

Historically, honeybee populations have often been shaped by the effects of human activity. As beekeeping became more industrialized, focused on maximizing honey production and returns from pollination contracts, the natural behavior and diversity of the bees have undergone dramatic alterations. The consequence of this has been a widespread use of chemical treatments to control pests and diseases, selective breeding for specific traits in queens, such as a high yield of honey or gentleness, and mass-produced colonies for commercial purposes. While these methods have helped meet commercial demands, they have also led to the decline in genetic diversity of honeybees. This erosion in the gene pool makes the honeybee colonies weaker and more prone to attacks by pests and diseases such as Varroa mites, besides making them more vulnerable to environmental stresses like climate change or habitat loss.

The problem with commodifying bees is that such a system often favors short-term gains over long-term sustainability. In an effort to raise homogeneous, high-yielding queens, beekeepers may actually be working against the very evolutionary processes that allow colonies to remain strong. Heavy reliance on imported or commercially bred queens leads to genetic homogenization, where local adaptations are lost, which reduces the ability of populations to address local environmental challenges. This could accidentally accelerate problems like colony collapses and reduced genetic variability that many scientists and beekeepers are concerned about.

One of the clearest examples of human intervention into queen production is grafting. In this technique, larvae are moved from worker cells into specifically designed queen cups or cells, which enable beekeepers to produce many queens at one time. Grafting has become a cornerstone of commercial queen rearing because of the large-scale production it enables. However, often here, the main goal is also to supply queens that can meet certain standards defined by humans, such as being calm, highly productive, and swarming less, instead of focusing on health or adaptability of the queens. While grafting may be used in scientific studies-for example, for testing resistance to pests-it results in commercial settings in uniform queens that are then marketed for certain qualities. These qualities are all too often subjective and aimed at human preferences rather than the natural needs and requirements of the bees.

It should be fully realized that these are human constructs and needs, they do not exactly translate into biological superiority or adaptiveness in nature. Artificial selection for such traits reduces the genetic variability of the population at times and makes colonies less viable in the long run, particularly if these kinds of traits are favored at the expense of traits that confer survival and adaptability. If it is not for commercial production primarily, then favoring naturally reared queens over grafted ones makes total sense. Queens emerging naturally from the hive-for instance, those developed through processes such as swarming-are usually better adapted to their environment because this is determined by the colony's collective history and the specific conditions of their immediate local environment.

Of all the ways bees can produce high-quality queens, swarming is arguably the most natural and effective. It is a basic reproductive strategy allowing colonies to expand and reproduce their numbers and it maintains genetic diversity. Through swarming, a colony prepares multiple large queen cells, which results in several new queens arising almost simultaneously. These queens develop within larger and better-provisioned cells full of royal jelly, making them healthier and more robust. This also tends to make queens produced through the natural process of swarming better suited to local conditions, as their traits are finely tuned by the collective selective pressures operative on the mother colony as well as by the environment they develop in. 

Importantly, swarming forms a rather integral part of their biology, it doesn't intrinsically mean that these queens will be more inclined toward swarming in the future. It is important to note that this belief that swarm-reared queens are more likely to swarm is, in fact, a myth. While swarming is dependent on a variety of factors such as colony health, environmental cues, and genetic predispositions, the way queens are reared is only one piece in the puzzle.

In swarming, the eggs laid by the queen herself in the prepared queen cups are larger than the normal eggs. This is a reflection of their evolutionary strategy for the most viable offspring. The mother queen invests more in these eggs, which results in daughter queens with larger bodies, better-developed reproductive organs, and higher reproductive potential. These maternal effects are an advanced adaptation to maximize the fitness and survival of future queens. Indeed, research supports the fact that these queens will be much healthier and more capable of supporting a resilient colony.

All these points bring into focus that the best queens are usually produced naturally by the bees themselves. Whether through swarming or maternal investment, the development of queens represents the distilled wisdom of the colony, honed over millions of years. While human methods of grafting or artificial selection can temporarily achieve desirable traits, true resilience and adaptability come from natural reproductive strategies that bees have developed. Supporting these natural methods and understanding the genetic and environmental factors influencing queen quality are essential for sustainable beekeeping.

Evangelia Mavridis

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