New member seeking info/background on Honeybee Morph

[T_Sauer]

Hey all, I have been on here several times as a guest and finally decided to step it up and register seeing as how this site has been my go to for information as I expand my knowledge as a BP owner. I have had a normal Bally for some time now and I came across this handsome fella the other day and just could not pass him up.
I guess you could say the addiction has begun But at any rate I am no seasoned snake keeper let alone breeder, I have a lot to learn and will be the first to admit that. I know next to nothing about the morphs, the do's and don'ts, what mixes well with with other morphs. However, I like what I see in the Honeybee male I just got and am very interested in experimenting with them after I put my time and research into learning more, but have no interest in trying my hand at it until I have an idea what I am doing. So this is where I open it up to the rest of you who have put your time in and actually know a thing or two about it. I'd like to start off simple by just learning how the Honeybee Morph came about, what genes are common in it, what has been proven to produce, what mixes well, and then the "big debate" some opinions on what would be an interesting project to shoot for with this Morph (that isn't to far fetched). And ofcourse any other information felt necessary to be added. Like I said .... Novice seeking knowledge here. Thank you in advance for your input and assistance.

The Lighting in these pic.'s doesn't show off his true beautiful coloring, I will try to get some with better lighting up soon

[steve_r34]

honey bee is a hypo spider .. hypo is a recessive gene .. witch means both snakes that bred had to carry it could have been as simple as a hypo x spider .. being spider is a dom gene whatever u mix it with it should produce half spider .. u can go to world of ball pythons genetic wizard and play around to see what u would like to put it with .. spider is more of a pattern changer as to color morph .. so putting him with a cool color changer mixed with the hypo u would a cool clutch ..but don't forget his mate would need to be het. hypo or all hypo as well if u want to see any hypo in the clutch

[Slowcountry Balls]

As stated, the Honey Bee is a Hypo Spider, and Hypo is a recessive gene. So a lot depends on how fast you want to see the morphs combine. If you breed your Honey Bee to anything other than an animal with the Hypo gene, you will get hatchlings that will at least (depending on what genes your female has) have a 1/2 chance of being Spider and all will be 100% het (heterozygous) for Hypo. Hypos and het Hypos are pretty cheap, so I would recommend that whatever female you choose to get, she be at least het Hypo (that way you'll have at least a 1/2 chance of producing visual Hypos). As for as which genes work well with both the Hypo and Spider genes, that's personal preference. My 2 cents would be Pastel, Mojave, Lesser, or Orange Dream. If you're going to buy a young female (cheapest option), buy soon because it will take her 2 to 3 years to be of breeding size.

[kc261]

If it were me, I'd get a female that is het hypo in addition to 1 or 2 dom or codom genes. That way you will get both hypos and non-hypos in the clutch.

A blast (pastel pinstripe) het hypo should be fairly inexpensive, and would yield a wide variety of nice combos. Hypo spinner blast being the "jackpot" combining all of the genes, but you'd also get pastels, pinstripes, spiders, bumblebees (pastel spider), blasts (pastel pinstripe), and spinners (spider pinstripe), and all of those could also be hypo. So that's a total of 14 different possible morphs!

Any female with 2 dom or codom genes that is also het hypo would give 14 possibilities, the only question would be whether or not all 14 would be something you'd want to produce. To find out what you like, as well as what is available in your price range, start browsing such places as the "bp pictures" section of this forum, kingsnake classifieds, and fauna classifieds. WOBP has already been mentioned, and that is great for playing around with once you start to have some ideas, but I found it a little hard to use when you don't even know what genes you want to consider, so I wouldn't start there.

[T_Sauer]

[Pythonfriend]

spider is a dominant gene. so when you breed a spider to a normal, you get 50% spiders and 50% normals. and when you breed it to a morph or morph combination, again, half of the hatchlings will get the spider gene.

hypo/ghost is a recessive. your BP is a visual hypo, so it has two copies of the gene. one copy from each parent. if you breed it to a normal, all the hatchlings get 1 copy of the hypo gene. so they all look normal. but they are heterozygous for hypo, in short "het hypo".

if you breed a visual hypo to a visual hypo, all hatchlings will be visual hypos. and if you breed a visual hypo to a het hypo, half of them will be visuals and the other half will be het hypo. if you breed het hypo to het hypo, you also get 25% visual hypos. its down to 25%, because the visual needs to get one copy from each parent, and because they are hets the chance for that is just 50% for each parent.

there is a lot of randomness involved. just like you wont get an average of 3.5 when you roll a six-sided dice 3 times. you get closer to the expected numbers when you roll the dice more often, or hatch out more eggs.


i agree with the others, look for a visual hypo female with other dominant or codominant genes in it, or look for a 100% het hypo female with other dominant or codominant genes in it. there are many choices. genes you might want to add are lesser, pinstripe, fire, pastel, enchi, calico, black pastel, .... ... . . there really are a lot of choices. and many of them are available as hypos or as 100% het hypos, also in combinations. you have to figure out what you like, and if you like how it combines with hypo and spider.


but you should try to verify what line of hypo it is. there are different lines of hypo, and many of them are compatible with each other, and there are hypos where its unknown which line they are (or they are a mix) but it is known that they are compatible with the main lines. but some lines are actually incompatible. the chances are high that its one of the regular compatible lines, or a mix of these, i would ask the breeder/seller about it, just to be sure. if you breed lines together that are incompatible, you get normal-looking BPs that are het for both.