Video summary
The presentation introduces a two-year research project funded by the North Central SER grant aimed at maximizing UBO scores, which measure disease resistance and hygienic traits in honeybee colonies. The core methodology involves controlling all drone-producing colonies within a three-mile radius of the mating yard and utilizing Yubio, a new pheromone-based assay, as the primary selection tool. This testing process is straightforward: a serum is applied to capped brood cells within a specific area of the hive frame, and after two hours, the number of uncapped cells is counted to calculate a score, where anything above 60 is considered high quality. The presenter emphasizes that avoiding smoke during the initial application ensures accurate results, while a screened tent is recommended to protect handlers from stings and keep equipment clean during the data collection process.
To support this selection program, the team employs specific queen rearing techniques tailored to the climate of Ohio, particularly focusing on temperature regulation in early spring. They utilize timing boxes to isolate queens between excluders for about four days before grafting off larvae around 18 hours old, a practice they find highly successful due to reduced drifting and better cell acceptance. The mating boxes consist of three deep frames chopped into sections with internal feeders, allowing colonies to build up brood patterns without disturbance. Once queen cells are dropped, the boxes are left undisturbed to minimize stress on the bees, and any extra mated queens are stored in a queen bank above an excluder with hatching nurse bees to ensure their care without introducing additional workers.
Data management plays a crucial role in tracking the success of different breeding lines throughout the seasons. The researchers use standardized cards to record hive IDs, breeder queen information, and precise time-in and time-out data for each UBO test, which are then logged using smartphones. Charts are created to monitor the progression of each colony and queen across spring and fall testing periods, revealing that while some scores may drop in the fall, the overall data provides a clear picture of genetic improvement. The project strictly selects only queens with UBO scores of 95% or 100% for grafting, prioritizing disease resistance over physical traits like color, although lighter-colored queens are often preferred simply for easier visibility during inspections.
The presenter concludes by highlighting the collaborative nature of the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program and encourages other beekeepers to explore similar research opportunities on their website. All findings, including detailed reports and additional data not shown in the slideshow, are available online via the SIR project page or through a dedicated Facebook group. The team invites interested individuals to reach out via email for questions and notes that they have produced videos for Inside the Hive TV to further share their insights. Ultimately, the goal is to demonstrate how consistent use of UBO testing can lead to the development of robust, disease-resistant adapted queen stock suitable for modern apiculture.
Read the full video transcript
Hello everybody. I'd like to welcome you
to uh our SIR presentation for uh our
North Central SER grant farmer rancher
grant FNC241406.
On the first page, you will notice a QR
code. If you scan that, it will take you
to our Facebook page that has followed
our research throughout the last two
years. Feel free to scan that or go to
sir.org and search our research project.
So, I just like to say the USDA does
offer uh sustainable agriculture
research education project research and
grants. Uh they're very good people to
work with. There's a lot of good
information on their website. Everybody
should check them out. Uh sir.org. And
our our area is the North Central Sair,
which is the Midwest.
All right. So, our project was on uh
we're trying to see how high of a UBO
score we can get in a 2-year period.
What we've done is we take a threem
radius. We're trying to control all the
production colonies, all the drone
producing colonies around our mating
yard within 3 miles and we're going to
use Yubio as our only selection tool.
It's a new pheromonebased essay that can
be conducted very easily, very quickly
and it helps you to identify colonies
that are have hygienic or disease
resistance traits. So the next slide is
a on the left is the picture of the kit
to you get a vial of serum. You're going
to apply this with their applicator and
you're going to mark the time in. And
what you're going to do is you're going
to squirt the serum on the cap brood
within the cylinder. It's very easy. It
gives you very detailed instructions.
And then you're going to back the frame
back into the colony. Uh you want brood
that is, you know, you don't want really
old brood. You want larvae in there,
capped larvae, nothing, you know, purple
eyed if you can keep from it. uh to
conduct the essay. You put the frame
back in, you close them up, you don't
use any smoke when you pull the frames
out. Then when you come back 2 hours
later, you pull the frame out and then
you count the number of uncapped brood
cells within that essay area and you
come up with a UBO score. [music]
Anything above 60 is considered high.
Anything above 40 is be considered
medium. So on the left here is our
timing boxes. We we think it's very
important to use timing boxes when we
graft off our queens. We like to graft
around 18-hour old larvae. So, we put a
a a clean comb in between those two
excluders and uh isolate the queen on
there for about 4 days. Uh we'll pull
that frame out. We'll graft off of her
and u then we'll introduce the uh queen
the ripe queen cells into the mating
boxes. Uh the mating boxes that we use
are three ways. Each each mating box
consists of one deep frame chopped into
three pieces uh with an internal feeder.
We that that just works best for us up
here in Ohio as far as you know helping
the the bees uh regulate the heat and
everything else early in the spring. The
three three ways work the best for us in
the deeps, not the mediums. All right,
so this slide here on the left is um is
our queen box frames that we start in
the spring. If we don't have them
already drawn out on colonies, we'll add
bulk bees to these boxes and a queen.
And we'll let these boxes go for, you
know, 45 days. Let the colony build out
the frames with the bees and brood, and
then we'll make up the queen boxes with
the bees and the brood. It's uh we're
way more successful doing that up here.
Uh like I said, with the temperature
differences, they don't drift as much.
The cells get accepted much better. And
on the right there is just, you know,
one of the boxes that we're getting
ready to take the frames out of to put
in the mating boxes to set up drop the
queen cells. So on the left here is our
timing box with bees in it and the queen
is isolated between two queen excluders
and we'll be grafting off of her. We
graft every Tuesday. Now the center is
just another picture of one of the queen
mating box frames that we are drawing
out. And on the right is one of the
sections of a queen box. just shows the
setup and how they're laid out. Uh,
three frames and a feeder. We typically
put our colonies out on plastic or some
type of ground cloth. So, I don't we
don't have, you know, cut the weeds or
cut the grass around them. We don't like
to mess around the queen boxes very much
when they're in production just so we
don't disturb them. Uh, we feel that if
you're able to leave them alone once you
drop the cell, we don't want to mess
with that box until we're ready to cage
the queen. So the least amount of
mowing, weed eating, anything around
those queen boxes, uh, we try to keep to
a minimum just to make sure that we
don't interfere with anything going on.
So this is just a frame with some queen
cells. We typically mark the cell bars
on which breeder queen we're using so we
can keep track of it. Uh, we can monitor
the progression and how well they're
doing and, you know, that way the
following year we can monitor might
washes and find out which queens did the
best. And this is just another picture
of some queen cells. So, we use uh Jay-Z
queen cages. They're just most
convenient for us. The way we have
everything set up, we typically put a
the queen in with at least four workers.
Uh depending on if we're going to put
her in a queen bank or not, it just
depends. But that's how we do it. Now,
this is uh this is one of our our mating
nukes. As you can see, they're how big
the frames are and the brood patterns.
And on the right there is one of our our
mated queens. We really like the the
lighter colored queens. I can see them a
lot better, but you know, they're they
are all different color queens. We're
not selecting for a lighter collar
queen. We're selecting for a high ubio
score. 95% or 100 is all we'll graft off
of. And this is one of our queen banks.
We will store extra mated queens that we
don't need it. We usually cage queens
every week. We cage queens every
Thursday. And if we have ever extra
queens, we put them in a queen bank to
pull them out as needed. If we put them
in a queen bank, we typically don't put
any workers in with them. Uh we put them
above an excludder hatching nurse bees
and frames of hatching bees around them
to help feed and take care of them the
best. So, you know, when you're doing
this yubo testing, when you start to do
this, uh you're not going to use any
smoke. So, you're going to be
conducting, pulling frames out of these
colonies, shaking the bees off, taking
them back to your your coworker to spray
the serum, take the picture, record the
time [music] in, time out, and then and
all with all that process. It's best if
you have some type of a screened in tent
or something for them because if not,
they're going to be battling with
getting stung on their hands, the phone
getting all the honey on it. It just you
put them in a tent, shake all the bees
off, slip them it in there, they're able
to work at their own pace and and record
the data a lot easier. It makes it a lot
it's a lot more pleasant that way. And
when you go to pull the frames out on
the second time, it's not that big a
deal cuz you can use smoke and the
[music] bees are a lot calmer. So, this
is just uh a slide that shows we had
brood minders on some of our colonies uh
to monitor the honey flow. Uh we want to
try to keep when we do the essays, we
want to try to do them on a honey flow.
They say that's important. So, we we had
brood minders on there. We did notice a
difference between spring and fall ubo
testing. You know, the percentages, some
of them would drop lower in the fall. Uh
but it's all in our report and our
findings uh in the SA report. So, this
is a picture of the card that we use. We
put the apary ID, the hive ID, uh then
we do a time in and a time out, uh and
record it all with your cell phone. And
this one here scored a really, really
good number. Uh this is just another
colony. It just shows you um you know
what it looks like before and after
after you apply the UBO. This is a chart
that we used. Person that was helping me
out made up these charts and uh they did
a pretty good job and we're able to
record the time in the timeout uh and
the UBO score. And then uh actually as
the project kept going, we were able to
add more data more to each chart. So
we're able to follow uh each colony
[music] and uh each queen through uh
through the seasons. So, this pretty
much concludes my presentation. Uh, like
I said, the people at SIR are very good
to work with. If if, like I said, if
you're if you're looking for
information, you're wanting to, you
know, learn about some research on
different projects, go to SIR. They have
a lot of projects that have been done
from beekeepers, universities, you name
it. And there's a lot of good
information on there. Uh, I just like to
thank everybody. And, uh, all right. So,
if you guys have any questions, you can
always reach out to me to combus.r.com.
r.com. That's my email. Uh if you have
any questions or anything like that. We
also have the Facebook page. It's combs
beef farm USDA research page. We've done
a video for inside thehive TV. It's on
our report. You'll be able to find
you'll be able to see all that and some
other videos that are in our report. So,
I encourage everybody to go to the
sir.org,
you know, go into research projects and
then type in Ubio. uh our project is
typically the first one that comes up
and you'll be able to view the report
and all the extra data that uh is not in
the slideshow. So anyway, again I thank
you very