Plan Bee, Australia’s national honey bee genetic improvement program, has been initiated to provide the infrastructure necessary to implement modern genetic breeding techniques in the honey bee industry. The program builds on the considerable expertise in queen breeding in Australia and the progress made in previous and current programs. Plan Bee does not seek to replace these programs, but rather to provide new tools to assist queen breeders in order to speed genetic progress in their own breeding operations.
This ‘Getting started with genetic selection’ guide has been produced to help queen breeders define their breeding objectives, record bee data, evaluate their colonies and share data with the Plan Bee Project Team. This guide complements the Plan Bee Breeding Manual (see ‘Related Resources’ further down this page).