Description
Select, rear, and breed honey bees to improve traits such as productivity, temperament, disease resistance, and overwintering. Use controlled mating methods—including isolated mating yards and instrumental insemination—and maintain detailed lineage and colony performance records. Manage hive health, equipment, and compliance for safe, sustainable bee breeding operations.
- • Provide supplemental feed and water to colonies as needed.
- • Inspect hives and brood to assess queen performance and detect disease, pests, or stress.
- • Monitor and treat Varroa mites, small hive beetle, Nosema, and other pathogens using IPM, approved treatments, and vaccinations where available.
- • Select breeder queens and drone colonies based on genetics, temperament, brood pattern, honey yield, and hygienic behavior.
- • Graft larvae and manage starter/finisher colonies to produce queen cells.
- • Establish and manage mating yards; control drone source and lineage.
- • Collect, label, and store drone semen for instrumental insemination.
- • Prepare and sterilize micro-syringes and insemination equipment.
- • Perform instrumental insemination of queens and document mating details.
- • Maintain logs of semen usage, matings, pedigrees, and colony performance.
- • Mark and, where permitted, clip queens; label hives for identification.
- • Record colony metrics such as population, brood pattern, temperament, honey production, and mite counts.
- • Split colonies, control swarming, and requeen to maintain stock quality.
- • Clean and disinfect hive bodies, frames, tools, and queen-rearing equipment.
- • Maintain proper temperatures and humidity in incubators, queen cages, and storage areas.
- • Purchase and stock feed, medications, queen-rearing supplies, and protective gear.
- • Coordinate veterinary prescriptions and regulatory compliance for medications and transport.
- • Package, market, and ship breeder queens, queen cells, nucs, and packages to clients and research programs.
- • Maintain apiary infrastructure; assemble and repair hives, stands, and mating nucs.
- • Educate customers and present breeding stock at industry events or field days.
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Agriculture
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Tasks & skills:
O*NET occupational data (work activities, skills, knowledge).
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This site includes information from O*NET by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA), used under the CC BY 4.0 license. Career Clutch has modified some of this information for student readability. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.
Last reviewed: Jan 2026
