InfoWet.pl Newsletter
Don't miss any interesting news.
Sign up and stay up to date! Sign up
Maintaining proper apiary management requires cyclical replacement of queen bees, whose utility characteristics deteriorate with age. In addition, there is the need to transfer queen bees to orphaned colonies or nuclei.
Advertisement
Of course, we can let the families raise a new queen on their own, but it is good practice to ensure the flow of genes from the breeding lines. Thanks to fast and cheap shipping by post, the beekeeper has the opportunity to buy queens from the best breeding apiaries in the country, while queen breeders have an almost unlimited sales market at their disposal.
What should you pay attention to when shipping mothers?
The general recommendations for shipping live insects are similar to those for shipping live birds. We have written about this before:
Read more On September 16, Poczta Polska resumes shipments of live birds. There are important guidelines
Nevertheless, it is worth clarifying a few details specific to the transport of live bees.
When it comes to the packaging in which the insects will be transported, we do not have to worry about special carriers – this function will be fulfilled by a shipping cage, in which the queen bee and her accompanying workers will be subjected to a new family. However, it should be remembered that the external packaging (e.g. cardboard) must be equipped with holes that allow for efficient air exchange, and the cages must be packed so that they cannot move inside the packaging.
Since queen bees are raised and transported from early May to late summer, when securing the cages we do not have to worry too much about protecting the insects from the cold, although in the event of a significant drop in temperature it is worth postponing the shipment for a while. For physiological reasons we also do not have to worry about the package being protected from the leakage of excrements, the quantities of which in the case of insects are practically zero.