For 100 years, almond trees, and their rootstocks, have gotten better and better.  Systematic breeding research by the almond industry has resulted in almond varieties and rootstocks that produce the desirable traits of tree vigor, hardiness, productivity, fruit size, drought tolerance, and resistance to pests and diseases.   Almond yields have increased from 500 to 3,000 pounds per acre.  Research invested in plant breeding is paying off for almond growers.

However, genetic material has been limited for honey bee stock improvement since the passage of the Honey Bee Act of 1922 prohibited the importation of the honey bees.   For almost 90 years, it was nearly impossible to infuse new genetic material into honey bee breeding lines. 

The US beekeeping industry has lacked the long-range breeding efforts enjoyed by economically important plant and animal species.  This is changing dramatically today.  Thanks to scientists like Dr. Walter (Steve) Sheppard of Washington State University (WSU), Susan Cobey, holding a joint appointment with UC Davis and WSU, and Dr. Marla Spivak, University of Minnesota, the long-term future of bee breeding looks promising.  Dr. Sheppard states “Maintaining adequate genetic diversity is fundamental to breeding programs directed toward the improvement of all crops and animals of agricultural significance.” These outstanding scientists are leading the way in an industry-wide honey bee stock improvement program that will ultimately improve the quality of bees destined to pollinate California almonds.

In 2010, Dr. Marla Spivak, formed a Tech Transfer Team in Oroville, CA, to assist queen breeders in Northern California.  This team is assisting the bee breeding industry to put into practice new strategies – made necessary by the fact that only about 600 queen “mothers” are responsible for the production of a million queen cells each year. Dr. Spivak found that California bee breeders were very skilled at producing high quality queens to supply beekeepers throughout the nation, but that the intricacy of breeding for disease and virus resistance, while maintaining desirable characteristics and pollination effectiveness, required more specialized assistance.  To that end, the Tech Transfer team was developed to enhance cooperation between the queen breeders and the universities to improve commercial honey bee breeding stock.  Shannon Wooten of Wooten’s Golden Queens, Inc., said at the North American Beekeeping Conference this past January, “The queen is the most important aspect of the colony … a good queen means a good honey bee colony”. 

Thanks to the tireless efforts of Sheppard and Cobey, there is now limited importation of germplasm from endemic European populations to increase genetic diversity and strengthen domestic honey bee stock.  Cobey and Sheppard are collecting honey bee semen under special permit and using instrumental insemination to develop the breeding program.  They have implemented cryopreservation to prolong the shelf life of collected semen and overcome logistics of international transportation.  Cryopreservation is widespread and routine in numerous agricultural animal practices such as cattle, swine and sheep.  In fact, cryopreservation has been used in the conservation of almond germplasm.  The technology is now being successfully used for honey stock improvement, a necessary step to introducing diversity in bee breeding.

Long-range US bee breeding will rely on new genetic material from the Old World.  Both feral and managed honey bee populations have been diminished by the Varroa mite.  In the Southwest, Africanized honey bees have introduced extremely defensive behavior, a highly undesirable trait, by interbreeding with our European bees.  Some areas of the country successfully raise Russian bees, but these bees do not reproduce early and quickly enough in late winter to be of value for the early almond pollination. 

Selected traits from the Sheppard - Cobey international germplasm repository will provide the diversity that has been lacking in our domestic sources.   Cobey, the leading expert in artificial insemination, teaches classes across the country on using artificial insemination to select desirable traits.  Since bees normally mate in flight in largely uncontrolled conditions, this technology brings control to the mating procedure.  California queen producers now have ready access to the repository and the technology to utilize the repository.   This service will be similar to the National Clonal Germplasm Repository at UC Davis that houses plant germplasm from around the world for use by plant breeders. 

Importation of honey bee germplasm and the accompanying techniques of cryopreservation and artificial insemination open up new and exciting frontiers for queen producers and the bee industry.  The time has come for the beekeeping industry to have the same access to genetic resources as other economically important crops in the form of a honey bee genetic repository and improved technologies to access the repository.  The future of the honey bee depends on it. 

This diversity in our domestic honey bee supply will result in honey bees better able to resist pests and pathogens and ultimately improve pollination services to the almond industry by providing a more dependable and sustainable source of honey bees to meet pollination demand.