What you'll learn:

The most important member in a honey bee colony is the queen. A colony needs a good quality queen to be strong and productive. In Arizona conditions queens can live up to two years, however, due to the climate, she begins to lay fewer fertilized eggs after one year. Colonies can rear their own replacement queens, but this may result in a colony becoming Africanized as these colony-reared queens may mate with feral drones. In this course beekeepers will get hands-on experience learning instrumental insemination techniques. Knowledge of instrumental insemination will equip beekeepers to select the exact queen and drones to establish a healthier, productive and more stable colony. Mastery of instrumental insemination will also allow a beekeeper to rear quality queens and drones from select breeder colonies whenever needed.

Course Objectives

• An introduction to the tools and process of instrumental insemination
• Understanding the importance of honey bee queens and how to raise them
• The importance of drones and how to raise them.
• How to collect semen from drones
• How to inseminate queens
• How to evaluate insemination success and the quality of the inseminated queen

This course is designed for:

• This class is designed for experienced hobby and commercial beekeepers, and bee researchers.
• The participants need to bring their own bee suits and gloves.
• The virgin queens and drones will be provided
• Coffee, appetizers and easy lunch will be provided.

Prerequisite:

Instrumental insemination equipment is required for this course. Limited sets of instrumental insemination equipment will be available for rent. To reserve a set of insemination equipment please contact the instructor Cahit.Ozturk@asu.edu

Please note class may be postponed or canceled if less than 3 students enroll.