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Why do you say not to mark virgins? Mine emerge in the incubator and are marked before introduction.

You are correct. A virgin queen becomes sexually mature after 5-6 days (it varies a little but 4 days would be pushing it). Weather can play a role in when they actually begin taking orientation flights and go on proper mating flights. I would aim to inseminate virgin queens around 5-10 days...

I liked the way you illustrated your superiority by using incorrect English ("better-er") just as @Worker bee did by miss-spelling "else",

The basis of Mendels work was that he selected a plant that was pure-breeding (i.e. when bred with each other, they produced consistently the same characteristics over many generations). Crossing these pure-breeding individuals (a pure-breeding smooth pod with a pure-breeding wrinkled pod)...

I agree - mark them as any colour that is out of the usual sequence. To be honest, I don't collect swarms anymore but, occasionally, one will move into vacant equipment. I requeen it as soon as I have one of my own queens available.

Nothing is ever wasted if you have a use for it.

You might think I'm joking (since they can't fly to mate after you've clipped a wing) but practice with drones.

I swiped a pair that look very similar from my wifes sowing box ;):oops::sneaky: I do clip control mated queens but don't clip naturally mated queens.

I don't think you're disagreeing at all. You agree that it takes lots of young nurse bees to feed the developing queen larva, which is the main point. I wouldn't get hung up over numbers because you can adjust the number of cells you ask them to make. Also, nucs vary in size from 3-frames all...

I had a bit of a drive around this morning but found hardly any OSR. An estate that I keep bees on said they are growing about one-third the amount they would do usually. It's cereals as far as the eye can see around here :-(

No. A queen is fed copious amounts of royal jelly so a nuc just doesn't have the nurse bee population to produce well-fed queens. A nuc is a good home for a queen cell but producing them really requires a full colony (or equivalent). Whichever race of bee you work with, you can't go wrong if...

I actually did my first graft of the year yesterday, I've delayed until the weather improved. It's still not perfect but it's good enough to raise queens. When you are happy with continuity, it's easier to focus on quality. If you don't, you just end up with a large number of colonies you can't...

I recommend that you don't feed them. However, if you have a frame of brood you can give them from another hive, that will encourage them to stay put. They gorge themselves with food prior to swarming so their honey-stomach is full. You really want them to use that food to set up your new colony...

For those who want to expand, that's the way to do it. I would always say to keep a few as back-ups in nucs though. If people look at their historic loss and plan to over-produce queens by double that amount, you can maintain your colony numbers. I say double to allow for things to go wrong (as...

I frequently see people on this forum who've lost their colony because the queen failed to return from a mating flight. IMHO, it's well worth having a couple of mating nucs on the go so that, if the worst happens, you have a spare queen, or two, available. If you don't need it, leave it in a...

Its ok. It's only been possible since 1927 :rolleyes:;)

Yes. Even the open mated ones. That way, I know which maternal line they come from. I only make daughter queens from the better performing stock. It's easier to treat them all the same. When I have enough for an II run, I just allow the surplus to open mate.

I mark/number mine when they emerge in the incubator. Most people wait until the queen is mated though. That's fine if you don't need to know the lineage. I want to track them for life. The weather has been so bad here, I was planning to do my first graft this weekend....but it's raining AGAIN!

Isn't it a bit early to have a white marked queen? Is she an import?