So you have 10 normal females and two male bees.

Do you breed 1 to 5 or 2 to all 10? Why?

I breed 2 to all. The studs seem to have a little spice when they smell another male has been around..

...interesting.
ck

Yep... I think that is my plan. I want to make sure I get some nice holdback female bees.

I breed 2 to all. The studs seem to have a little spice when they smell another male has been around..

Plus you are guaranteeing that you will get hatchlings even if one male is infertile. All in all a great way to go!

I have bred ball pythons sporadically over the last several years. When I have multiple males available I utilize more than one with a female. This last year I bred a spider and a pastel to a large female who later produced ten good eggs. I got one female spider, one female pastel and 2.8 normals. It seems logical that your odds for producing morphs decrease with multiple males fertilizing a single female. Has anyone else noticed this? I ask out of curiosity more than anything. I will continue to use more than one male when it suits my needs.

So you have 10 normal females and two male bees.

Do you breed 1 to 5 or 2 to all 10? Why?

i would do 1/5, but that's just me... if you ever wanted to know how the father was you would know....i.e if you were trying to work on a project.

unless you really don't care 2/10, and plan to sell/trade all of them

Pitoon

I would lean the way of Pitoon, and following is my reasoning. Let's say you breed both to all 10. If one male was infertile or didn't do anything, that would mean that 1 male would have to successfully fertilize 10 females (which is rare without an ultrasound to startegically breed). My statistical average for production is 60%, which would mean that you would get 6 clutches. If you breed 1 male to five females, and one is infertile, you stand the risk, statistically of only producing 3 clutches, but having to only breed 5 females, there is a chance that the male would do a better job, and you could get 5. If both males were ferile and copulated with each of their five females, you would be back to 6 clutches, statistically speaking again. This would be just as good as the first option.

The last thing that I would interject, is that this year I only bred one BumbleBee male, but got several clutches from different females. There was quite a variability in the quality of the Bees produced. Since this was sired by one male, the females must have had some influence on the appearance. So, I would expect that one of your male BumbleBees will consistently produce higher quality Bees. In that case, I would rather know myself which one produces nicer stock, as I could weed out the other one in subsequent breedings.

This is all my opinion, but I hope it was of some use in helping you solve your dilemma.

I like your reasoning mudduc, it makes alot more sense to find which male is producing better offspring and keep him if you plan on breeding again.
Also if one male is infertile you want to find that out asap as well.:machinegun:
This year I am limiting my males to 4 females each, luckily I have enough males for this ratio:lmao:

If one or both of the males are virgins I would consider using a different strategy....

Great info everyone...

This is really interesting.