Due to the challenges of producing honey bee queens in a northern
climate during early spring, Canadian beekeepers rely on importing queens from
other countries, especially early on in the season. This presents various risks
to the Canadian beekeeping industry. To help support the Canadian industry and
mitigate associated risks with importing queens, studies within Canada have
focused on assessing the feasibility of storing queens in banks over the winter.
This week’s blog will discuss current research on banking queens in Canada,
with a focus on the quality and performance of banked queens. This week’s blog
will also provide a brief overview of the Atlantic Tech Transfer Team for
Apiculture’s queen production research, recent training opportunities and
research plans for 2026.
Banking Queens in Canada: New Canadian Research;
Updates on ATTTA’s Queen Production Research and
Initiatives
The availability of local honey bee queens in early spring is a major
limiting factor for Canadian beekeepers. Due to Canada’s climate conditions and
unavailability of adequate drone populations in the early spring, rearing local
queens typically cannot begin until May and June depending on the region of
Canada. Currently, Canadian beekeepers rely on queens imported from other parts
of the world with warmer climates to meet demand for queens in early spring,
which presents various risks to the Canadian beekeeping industry. Associated
risks include introduction of various pests and/or diseases, treatment
resistant pests and/or diseases, and an overreliance on external industries. To
help mitigate associated risks, studies within Canada have focused on assessing
the feasibility of storing queens in banks over the winter, with the aim of
ensuring their availability in early spring of the following year.
Recently published research completed in Quebec in 2020/2021 aimed to
assess the impact of overwintering queen banks on the nutritional and
reproductive qualities of queens, as well as their overall performance (Boudreau and Giovenazzo, 2025). In
September 2020, researchers prepared 8 queen banks each with 40 individually
caged queens. Researchers selected to bank 40 queens per strong double colony
as previous research indicated that more than 40 queens can lead to a higher
mortality percentage in spring (Rousseau et al., 2019). On October 26,
2020, these queen bank colonies were placed in an indoor wintering facility
with conditions previously researched by Rousseau et al., 2019.
Additionally, 66 nucleus colonies with a laying queen were overwintered indoors
as control queens for the study.
From October
26, 2020, to May 1, 2021, the banked queens had a winter survival rate of 37%,
whereas the control queens had a survival rate of 89%. The range of queen
survival between the 8 banks was between 11% and 70%. When comparing the
control queens and banked queens in Spring 2021, the study found that there was
no significant difference in the queen weight, ovary weight, sperm count, sperm
viability, hemolymph protein, or vitellogenin percentage, between the two
groups.
Researchers
also assessed the performance of the surviving banked queens and control queens
in newly made nucleus colonies throughout the 2021 beekeeping season. By August
18, 2021 there was no significant difference in the survival of the banked
queens and control queens and their colonies. There was also no significant
difference in the weight gain between these two groups of colonies. The study
did reveal that colonies with banked queens had significantly less brood
production during the first month after being introduced to nucleus colonies
compared to the control queens.
Overall,
this research demonstrated that banked queens and control queens had similar
measured parameters for reproduction and nutritional status despite varying
survival rates throughout the winter.
Although further research is required to improve queen banking
techniques for Canadian winters, this study demonstrated that banked queens are
a viable option for beekeepers and has the potential to enhance
self-sufficiency in the beekeeping industry.
This past beekeeping season, the ATTTA team did some queen production within their operation to improve upon the team’s queen rearing skills and knowledge. In late June, the ATTTA team set-up two cloake board colonies which were grafted into weekly for five weeks. Produced queens cells were either placed in a mini mating nucleus colony or frozen for future research and/or teaching purposes. Successfully mated queens were either used in queenless colonies within the operation, introduced to newly made nucleus colonies, or frozen for future testing.
In addition
to ATTTA’s own steps towards queen production, the team organized and hosted
queen production training, taught by guest instructor Alison Van Alten, to help
support a sustainable queen production industry within the Maritime region.
This past summer the ATTTA team was able to gain practice in queen production, and has grown their number of colonies to better support queen production next year. The goal for next year will be to continue to grow colony numbers in order to support enough queen production to create a queen bank. ATTTA has previously done queen banking research from 2021 to 2023 and will be in a good position to resume this work next season with the goal of providing information to the Atlantic industry.
References
Lamothe
Boudreau, M. and Giovenazzo, P., 2025. Physiological qualities of honey bee
queens (Apis mellifera) overwintered in banks. Journal of
Apicultural Research, pp.1-13.
Rousseau,
A., Giovenazzo, P., Levesque, M., & Houle, E., 2019. Mass storage of honey
bee queens overwintered at different temperatures in Canada. Centre de
recherche en sciences animales de Deschambault.
Connecting with ATTTA Specialists
If you’d like to connect with ATTTA specialists or learn more about our program, you can:
visit our website at https://www.perennia.ca/portfolio-items/honey-bees/
Email attta@perennia.ca