Bee Breeding

Breeding bees is the deliberate selection by the beekeeper of characteristics within both queen and drone populations and taking control of the natural mating processes of the bees in order to change the quality of the bees they are working with. Bee breeding is based on variability between colonies. This variation is behavioural as well as morphological.

A beekeeper keeps bees in order to collect their honey and other products that the hive produce (including beeswax, propolis, flower pollen, bee pollen, and royal jelly), to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary or "bee yard".

Bees can be harvested from beehives, which can be found glowing around the world, and each has a default "species," depending on its location.  Each Bee has "chromosomes," that carry its traits, such as its species, and its other attributes. These traits can be combined to get desired breeds. For instance, if you have a slow, industrious breed, you can crossbreed it with a faster cultivated breed, to get a new breed with both benefits.

Mating

To start the breeding process, place a princess and a drone into an Apiary. They will be replaced with a queen of the same type as the princess. Over time, the queen will die, and at the end of its life, it will produce offspring. These new bees will be dependent on what drone you paired with the princess to begin with. Specific combinations give a chance of getting a specific resulting breed.

Each of these chromosomes consists of a primary and a secondary trait. Usually the primary trait will be the active one, except if the trait on the primary is recessive and the secondary dominant, in which case the secondary trait will be the active one.

Mutation

Inheritance alone will not get you the higher end species of bees in Forestry. Mating the right combination of bee species has a chance of giving you a possibly better breed.

Structure of a bee colony

A domesticated bee colony is normally housed in a rectangular hive body, within which eight to ten parallel frames house the vertical plates of honeycomb that contain the eggs, larvae, pupae and food for the colony.

Differing stages of development

Queen ———Drone ———. Worker

Egg 3 days 3 days 3 days.

Larva 8 days. 10 days. 13 days

Cell caped 8days 8days 10 days

Pupa. 4 days 8 days 8 days

Total. 15days 21days 24days

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