A review of Healthy Bees, Heavy Hives that recently appeared in BeeCraft magazine got me thinking. It was generally a positive review, but towards the end there was some criticism for missing something out. In fact, it stated: “I believe the absence of a balanced argument on the subject of queen imports is a significant omission”. I’m sure there are plenty of other things that we missed out, given that there are only just over 200 pages of content, including many photographs and illustrations.

Our Little Book

Given that potential readers of our book may be influenced by published book reviews, I was disappointed that the BeeCaft review failed to mention that the book goes into some detail on raising queens of your own. We cover the importance of queens, traits, selection of breeders, the process of producing queens at varying scales, and mating. There are some really excellent (in my opinion) diagrams that help to explain the process of raising queens. Most of my queens in my apiaries were grafted by my own fair hand (flipper, actually). I think that particular review might leave readers with the impression that all we talk about is buying queens in from abroad, which is not the case.

Don’t get me wrong, I bet if I reviewed a book, I would mess it up far more spectacularly than the review I’m referring to. Both Paul Horton and I are extremely grateful to BeeCraft (and reviewer Geoff Blay) for even thinking of our little book. I am using the review as a way to introduce the controversial topic of queen imports, rather than to complain about it.

Bias

I freely admit that I have my biases. For example, I find it very difficult to hear about ‘treatment free’ beekeeping, knowing what I know about the damage wreaked on honey bees by varroa mites and associated viruses. Beekeepers do seem to have strident views on numerous topics, and I reckon the importation of queens must be right up there towards the top of the list. I have been trying to understand exactly what causes such intense opposition to the importation of honey bee queens.

Opposition To Imports

The British Beekeepers’ Association (BBKA) has many members (25,000 is my guess), and is the vehicle through which most UK beekeepers receive information, advice, and education on the subject of beekeeping. The BBKA opposes the importation of queens. Presumably, many of the beekeepers in the UK do too. As it happens, the BBKA News has just arrived at my house, and it contains an excellent article on sourcing queens by Lynfa Davies. It’s mostly aimed at beginners, and rightly encourages learning about making your own queens. I’m fully onboard with that. There are some valid concerns about imports, which I will discuss in due course.

Firstly, though, the concept of imports and exports (aka international trade) has been going on for millennia, to the benefit of the majority of people. Try imagining what your life would look like without computers, mobile phones, TV sets, motor vehicles, clothing, food, etc. that comes from some far-off place. How many cars on our roads are from Germany, France or the Far East? I must conclude that it is not imports per se that people object to, but imports of this particular item (queen bees). The import of queens is not new, of course. It’s been going on for as long as we have had beekeepers and the ability to travel.

Why Does It Happen?

As I understand it, the reason for such vast quantities of imports (of anything) are that:

• they are unavailable locally and/or
• the imports are better than local stuff and/or
• the imports are cheaper

When it comes to farming, I find it sad that most supermarkets seem to prioritise ‘cheapness’ over quality, which means that UK food producers often have a tough time. This is why I like farmers’ markets; local food which is great quality, albeit a wee bit pricier than something in a packet from a supermarket. At least the honey at farmers’ markets is actually honey.

Reasons To Be Wary

There are some sound reasons for being wary of imported livestock, including queen bees. The big one is the risk of importing exotic pests and diseases. Or any pests and diseases, for that matter. Varroa mites got here on imports. We don’t want them, but that ship has sailed, and we don’t want small hive beetles or tropilaelaps either. Asian hornets are here now, but they came in with our other imports (not our imported queens). If everyone obeyed the law, these risks would be largely mitigated, but, in the real world, some don’t.

I have often seen it cited that Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus (CBPV) is higher in apiaries with imported queens, which it is. This does not necessarily mean that the imports brought CBPV with them; they may just be more susceptible to the disease that is already here. However, given all the nasty things that can arrive with imports, I am in agreement with either buying locally or being extremely careful with ensuring that imports pass stringent safety checks.

Local Adaptation

Another tick in the ‘don’t import queens’ box concerns local adaptation. The honey bee is a remarkably resilient and adaptable insect. Research has indeed shown that local bees tend to do slightly better than bees from far away, which is not exactly unexpected. However, bear in mind that here in the UK we have an enormous range of different local conditions. Different weather, different plants, different accents (!). Is a bee from Essex going to do as well as the local bees in, say, Carlisle. I doubt it. It’s not quite the same as an import from Southern Europe, but it is effectively a ‘foreign bee’. However, perhaps a Danish bee would do better in Carlisle than an Essex bee. Perhaps a Belgian bee, from just over the Channel, would do better in Essex than one from Carlisle.

In places with more extreme conditions (West coasts of Ireland & Scotland, parts of Wales, Northumberland etc.) the ‘local adaptation’ factor is stronger because the environment is harsher. In those areas, we often find that Apis mellifera mellifera type bees do best, and those are the places where you are most likely to find very pure examples of that subspecies. Horses for courses.

The same logic that says, “Don’t import bees from Europe because they are not adapted to our unique conditions,” should also apply to the Essex bee travelling up to Carlisle. Speaking for myself, I don’t think my conditions are anything special; all very non-extreme. In twelve years I have had bees from Somerset (Peter Little), Perthshire (Jolanta), Northumberland (Luke Hutchinson) and the Home Counties (Ged Marshall) — they were all fine. My favourite queens are the ones grafted by me, and mated in my little corner of Cheshire.

Pesky Foreigners

The real reason beekeepers seem to get so hot under the collar about imported queens is that they have been told, over and over again, that when those nasty foreign bees mix their genes up with our lovely locals, the result is a hybrid that stings for fun. That’s the bit I struggle with. My locals ain’t lovely; they are okay. Some are great, some not (just like the imports). My locals are ‘mongrels’ — a genetic mixture of all sorts, with probably about 50% Apis mellifera mellifera included. When you mix hybrids up with other hybrids, you get hybrids. Some will be great, some will be horrific, and many somewhere in between.

The propensity to ‘defensive behaviour’ in bees is determined by numerous factors, of which one part is genetics. There is not one ‘on/off switch’ for defensiveness; it appears to be associated with many genes, but also environmental factors too. I think it is misleading to claim that when a local hybrid is crossed with local drones (hybrid), they will produce more gentle bees than with drones from a ‘foreign’ hybrid. Especially if those ‘foreign’ drones come from years of careful selective breeding for the trait of gentleness.

Not Just Genetics

Take a gentle colony and stick it in a different location, and the temperament could change, even with the same bees. In fact, a gentle colony can become horrible when the honey flow stops, or when the queen starts to fail. It is too simplistic to ‘blame the foreigners’ in my opinion. It’s also ridiculous to be completely fine with moving bees within the UK but totally opposed to moving them in from a neighbouring (sometimes nearer) country, at least on the grounds of making bees more defensive.

The Scale Of The Issue

The number of queens imported to the UK gradually rose over the years to about 20,000 per year, but has fallen back to 10,105 (2023). https://www.nationalbeeunit.com/diseases-and-pests/reports-charts-and-maps/imports-and-exotics/live-third-country-import-report/?year=2023

The imports are not a big slice of the total number of queens in the UK. Who buys them? I reckon a lot probably go to commercial beekeepers, but presumably some curious amateurs get involved too. Some commercial beekeepers run 200–300 hives with no employees, or maybe one, and they are flat-out dealing with honey production. They can buy excellent queens who do an outstanding job for perhaps £30–£40 apiece, or they can make their own. You can see how, if you want 100 queens a year, then buying them in for £3,000 makes sense. The costs of setting up and running a queen rearing unit would be higher, although once it got going, some costs could be clawed back from nuc sales. As the commercial bee farm gets larger (500+ colonies), so the logic for a queen unit becomes greater.

If you have to hire staff to do it, the costs really ramp up. But if you do it yourself, the huge amount of extra time demanded from running a queen unit will eat into time allocated for checking production colonies, swarm control etc. Personally, speaking as one who does not make his living from honey sales, I raise queens because I love doing it. Moreover, now that I have made the investment in equipment, the actual cost of my homemade queens is probably not too high. I do buy in the odd instrumentally inseminated breeder queen, though, and they are not cheap. This year’s breeder queen, assuming she survives winter, came from Northumberland Honey. Last year’s was one from Andrew Little. I also graft off my own queens when I find a nice one.

I wonder how many queens are purchased by UK beekeepers each year. I reckon at least 30,000 of them. According to the National Bee Unit (NBU), there are about 300,000 colonies here, but that ignores those ‘under the radar’. Even if only 10% of those get re-queened with a purchased queen, we get to 30,000. Can UK queen producers satisfy demand for 30,000+ queens per year, every year, in times of good weather and bad? I don’t think so. That’s why imports happen.

Fantastic UK Queen Producers

Incidentally, there are some fantastic queen producers here in the UK. Just not enough of them. It does amuse me that many of the people seeking a ‘UK queen’ are actually buying daughters of an imported breeder queen. It is very common for queen producers to buy the best breeder queens they can find, often from all over Europe, and then mate their daughters here at home. The resulting bee is a UK-bred queen. But her genetics are not entirely British. Frequently, they are not very British at all, depending on the drones that mated with her. If you populate a mating area with drone-donor colonies, where the drone mother is an imported breeder, and you use virgin daughters from an imported breeder (different line), you end up with decidedly non-UK bees. But they are ‘UK bred,’ so that’s OK. They are also superb bees, in the main.

Trying To Be Balanced

In summary, I much prefer to make my own queens rather than buy them, sometimes I do buy them, and every year I buy an instrumentally inseminated breeder queen (from a UK queen breeder). I entirely understand that not everybody wants to make queens, and that they therefore must buy them. Given the balance of cost, quality and availability, it seems inevitable that imports of queens from Europe take place to some extent. I am concerned about the pest/disease angle regarding imports, but less convinced by the ‘local adaptation’ and ‘defensive bee’ arguments, for my area, at least.

Update

I have had feedback from ‘one who knows’ that the main buyers of imported queens are ‘traders’. These are a subset of commercial beekeepers who buy in queens, then sell on both queens and nucs to customers. Once the imported queen has been added to a nuc, the nuc is a ‘UK nuc’. Some people do this exclusively, some do a mixture of this (especially early season) and raising their own queens. Some people concentrate entirely on raising their own, so they are not traders, but queen producers (or queen breeders if they use isolated mating or instrumental insemination). The ‘traders’ will mostly be selling to the smaller beekeepers, because the big operations will import directly rather than go through a ‘middle man/woman’.