A healthy bee hive is powered by one queen bee and all of her daughters, the worker bees.
The queen lays the eggs and passes on genes that will be expressed in the work of her daughters.
Like other livestock, honey bees can be selected for production traits.
Australia is lucky to have honey bee mite-free status.
However, the country’s beekeeping industry still faces some major challenges such as access to floral resources and queen bees that are bred for production and health traits.
NSW Department of Primary Industries is investing $1.3 million over five years in a commercially relevant, scientific queen bee breeding program at Tocal College to help the beekeeping industry. This program will establish a population of bee hives for use in research and development as well as support delivery of the Certificate III in Beekeeping qualification.
Pending additional funding, NSW DPI will work in collaboration with University of Sydney and University of New England to increase the scope of this program to a national level.
The core program aims using the NSW DPI investment of $1.3 million over five years will be to:
- Evaluate important traits relating to honey production, pollination efficiency (pending horticulture industry investment) and disease resistance using standardised testing protocol;
- Compare and evaluate genetic material for overseas populations (pending import/export legislation);
- Produce a standardised system for tracking the genetic merit of the various lines; and
- Establish pedigrees and performance records for specific populations.
Tocal College will serve as a base of operations where 50 breeder queen hives will be located year round and 200 production hives will be located part of the year.
The production hives will be trucked around NSW to key flowering events, including almond and canola pollination and seasonal eucalypt flowering.
