Abstract The decline in managed honey bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) colony health worldwide has had a significant impact on the beekeeping industry. To mitigate colony losses, beekeepers in Canada and around the world introduce queens into replacement colonies; however, Canada's short queen rearing season has historically limited the production of early season queens. As a result, Canadian beekeepers rely on the importation of foreign bees, particularly queens from warmer climates. Importing a large proportion of (often mal-adapted) queens each year creates a dependency on foreign bee sources, putting beekeeping, and pollination sectors at risk in the event of border closures, transportation issues, and other restrictions as is currently happening due to the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. Although traditional Canadian queen production is unable to fully meet early season demand, increasing domestic queen production to meet mid- and later season demand would reduce Canada's dependency. As well, on-going studies exploring the potential for overwintering queens in Canada may offer a strategy to have early season domestic queens available. Increasing the local supply of queens could provide Canadian beekeepers, farmers, and consumers with a greater level of agricultural stability and food security. Our study is the first rigorous analysis of the economic feasibility of queen production. We present the costs of queen production for three Canadian operations over two years. Our results show that it can be profitable for a beekeeping operation in Canada to produce queen cells and mated queens and could be one viable strategy to increase the sustainability of the beekeeping industry.

中文翻译：

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Honey Bee Queen 生产：加拿大成本计算案例研究和盈利能力分析

摘要 全球管理蜜蜂（膜翅目：蜂科）群体健康的下降对养蜂业产生了重大影响。为了减少蜂群损失，加拿大和世界各地的养蜂人将蜂王引入替代蜂群；然而，加拿大较短的蜂王饲养季节在历史上限制了早期蜂王的生产。因此，加拿大养蜂人依赖进口外国蜜蜂，尤其是来自温暖气候的蜂王。每年进口大量（通常是适应不良的）蜂王造成对外国蜜蜂来源的依赖，在边境关闭、运输问题和其他限制的情况下，养蜂和授粉部门处于危险之中，这是由于目前正在发生的2020 年 Covid-19 大流行。尽管传统的加拿大蜂王浆生产无法完全满足早季需求，但增加国内蜂王浆产量以满足中后期需求将减少加拿大的依赖。同样，正在进行的研究探索加拿大越冬蜂王的潜力，可能会提供一种策略，让早季国内蜂王可用。增加当地蜂王的供应可以为加拿大养蜂人、农民和消费者提供更高水平的农业稳定性和粮食安全。我们的研究是对蜂王浆生产经济可行性的第一次严格分析。我们展示了两年内三个加拿大业务的皇后生产成本。