The man on a mission to save declining bee populations by extracting the insects’ semen with his own hands and artificially inseminating the queens
September 11, 2017
From: Daily Mail
- Michael Waite, 53, is one of the few beekeepers to manually inseminate queens
- He says manual intervention has become the final chance to bring backs bees
- The parasite varroa mite and colder summers is making it hard for bees to mate
- They need 16 to 17 degrees Celsius and little wind for a mating flight
Michael Waite, 53, is one of the few beekeepers around the globe who is speeding up reproduction in his hives by manually inseminating queen bees. Pictured is the process of squeezing semen out of bees
Michael Waite, 53, is one of the few beekeepers around the globe who is speeding up reproduction in his hives by manually inseminating queen bees.
He says this manual intervention has become the final chance to bring bee numbers back up after the killer parasite varroa mite and colder summers making it hard for bees to mate.
Leave a Comment