Breeding bees in Swiss valleys

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Peter Linder extracts one-day-old bee larvae from one of the cells in the hive. They have to be fed with royal jelly. Only well-fed larvae can develop into fully-fledged queen bees. Marc Latzel / 13 Photo

The larvae are put into special cups. Marc Latzel / 13 Photo

A five-day-old larva of a queen bee sits in a cup and is fed with royal jelly. Each one could grow into a queen bee if it is given enough of the substance secreted by honeybee workers. Marc Latzel / 13 Photo

Hive frames with the honeycomb for queen bees. Tubes with bars are put over each cell before they hatch. This prevents the queen bees from killing their rivals. Marc Latzel / 13 Photo

It takes 16 days for a new queen to hatch. The beekeeper marks it with a number with coloured glue indicating the year they were raised. Marc Latzel / 13 Photo

Linder takes a spoonful of worker bees, weighing about 100 grams, which he puts in the breeding boxes and then adds a queen. He has to make sure that there are no male bees among them. Marc Latzel / 13 Photo

Linder checks the health of his Carnica bee population before beekeepers visit the Kiental Valley to buy his queen bees. The colonies live in remote locations to prevent them mingling with foreign species of bees. Marc Latzel

The young bee colonies are taken to a rearing station. It takes the queen a few days to acclimatise. Marc Latzel / 13 Photo

The queen begins her mating flights when it's warm enough (around 12 degrees Celsius.) A queen mates with several male bees until her seminal vesicle is filled with sperm. The male bee dies after successful copulation in springtime with a bee queen - its sole purpose in life. Marc Latzel / 13 Photo

The bee queen quickly gains in size and weight shortly after having mated and begins to lay eggs. A group of about ten worker bees accompanies her and feeds the queen continuously during this phase. Marc Latzel / 13 Photo

A young colony with a queen bee, fertilised eggs and wax cells full of honey. A new cycle can now begin for the bee population Marc Latzel / 13 Photo

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Since 1985, the total number of bees in Switzerland has fallen by a quarter. The photographer and beekeeper Marc Latzel has documented a special breed of bee that thrives in Alpine valleys.

In the Kiental valley in the Bernese Alps, Peter Linder has set up a Carnica nursery. Here he breeds purebred Carnica queen bees using careful selection and artificial insemination. Carnica bees are a subspecies of the Western honey bee known for their ability to defend themselves against pests.

Remote Swiss mountain valleys are ideal places for breeding, as they prevent different bee species from mixing and ensure that pure-bred queen bees can develop properly. Beekeepers travel from far afield to have their queens mated there. 

A bee colony consists of worker bees, drones and a single queen. The queen bee is followed by 5,000-40,000 other bees, depending on the season. She differs only slightly from the workers – she’s a little bit bigger and longer. 

Without the queen bee, nothing happens in the colony. The queen is a real egg-laying machine. Her genes, and those of the drones mating with her, determine the behaviour of her colony: is it gentle or aggressive, productive or not, is it robust or susceptible to disease? 

A queen bee is between two and five years old. She governs her colony via the pheromones she releases. Every bee therefore knows which hive it belongs to and the task it has to carry out. Pheromones also control and stimulate the sex drive of drones. 

Worker bees born in summer work their whole lives, only six to eight weeks. First a worker is responsible for cleaning the comb, then for feeding the larvae and the queen, and then for building new honeycombs. 

A bee is then used as a guard to defend the hive. Finally, it spends the rest of its life collecting nectar, pollen and water to produce honey. Exhausted, it usually dies somewhere outside the beehive, just like thousands of other bees do on a daily basis.  

Today, Switzerland is home to 165,000 bee colonies, which are looked after by some 17,500 beekeepers. On May 20, beekeepers, researchers and enthusiasts across the globe will mark World Bee Day. External link

Adapted from German/urs