An Aga Queen

[Tremyfro]

Tremyfro will soon have a new queen! I saved a likely one when we cleared some out of my langstroth colony last Thursday. A descendant of my lovely first carniolan queen. She is at this very moment struggling to cut her way out of her cell. The grandchildren are hovering watching this miracle of nature.
The Aga, known for its nurturing warmth, succeeds again!
What is the best way of looking after her. I have put a tiny dab of honey in the queen catcher with her so she can feed herself. Put her in a cage and make up a nuc?

 

[nantmoel]

Tremyfro will soon have a new queen! I saved a likely one when we cleared some out of my langstroth colony last Thursday. A descendant of my lovely first carniolan queen. She is at this very moment struggling to cut her way out of her cell. The grandchildren are hovering watching this miracle of nature.
The Aga, known for its nurturing warmth, succeeds again!
What is the best way of looking after her. I have put a tiny dab of honey in the queen catcher with her so she can feed herself. Put her in a cage and make up a nuc?

Happy days - get her some attendants, or make up Nuc and run her on in.

 

[For want of a better word]

Surely just let her go so she can start a nice new colony in a hollow tree somewhere?

Yeghes da

 

[tonyofarr]

I would put her in a Q cage and make up a nuc, especially if she is from a queen you really like, a spare queen is always useful.

I have also got a queen above my stanley (poor man's aga). I found her with an entourage on a stand by my nucs at about 8 pm yesterday, the only trouble is I don't know which nuc she came from and it is pouring down again. I am sure my queen had been on a mating flight and got too tired/cold to make it back home.

 

[Tremyfro]

She is out! She has a yellow stripy abdomen. Perhaps she is a wasp! She looks quite small but I know after mating she will be much bigger.
i have a nuc which may be queenless...I will check it out first.
Icanhopit...now you know that is not good advice....naughty!

 

[Tremyfro]

I would put her in a Q cage and make up a nuc, especially if she is from a queen you really like, a spare queen is always useful.

I have also got a queen above my stanley (poor man's aga). I found her with an entourage on a stand by my nucs at about 8 pm yesterday, the only trouble is I don't know which nuc she came from and it is pouring down again. I am sure my queen had been on a mating flight and got too tired/cold to make it back home.

Do you think she will recover? Perhaps if the weather improves you will be able to put them back out and hope they remember which nuc to go back into. I've already had one queen which came back from getting mated and went into the wrong nuc.

 

[Obee1]

She is out! She has a yellow stripy abdomen. Perhaps she is a wasp! She looks quite small but I know after mating she will be much bigger.
i have a nuc which may be queenless...I will check it out first.
Icanhopit...now you know that is not good advice....naughty!

Congratulations. A new addition to the bee yard. I love a fat yellow stripey jobbie. Yesterday I built a colony by amalgamating some surplus to requirement queenless nucs and gave them a frame of eggs from my fave Bucky queen. Fingers crossed I will have a new fat ginger queen soon.

 

[madasafish]

Do you think she will recover? Perhaps if the weather improves you will be able to put them back out and hope they remember which nuc to go back into. I've already had one queen which came back from getting mated and went into the wrong nuc.

I paint my mating hive entrances yellows and blues in different shapes.

 

[B+.]

Is this part of the new marketing strategy for Aga?

 

[Tremyfro]

Is this part of the new marketing strategy for Aga?

Over the years...in different houses...ours housed...piglets, lambs, kittens, birds, chicks, ducklings....all live ...he he and later dead ones...yum! Well apart from the kittens and birds.

Far to wet here today to open a hive...so she will have to wait till tomorrow.
I think this one will survive Obee1....but then it didn't get the ...falling down the back of the Aga...chucked out on the patio ...treatment the previous one suffered! Ha ha.

 

[For want of a better word]

Is this part of the new marketing strategy for Aga?

Queens are raised best on a falling oven... our 30A two oven beast braised ducks nicely.
For queen rearing I tend to use an especially built incubator that has full control over heat and humidity... and can accommodate a few hundred queens!

Yeghes da

 

[tonyofarr]

Tremyfro, I am sure my queen will be fine if I can get her in a nuc fairly quickly, she is running around a queen cage with attendants and they have some candypollen. The trouble is it has been pouring down all day. I suspect I know which nuc she came from but I want to check.

All my nucs and mating nucs have been painted in an assortment of colours to make them easier for orientation but last year I saw a queen return to the wrong one (the guards were being very defensive and there was a real racket coming from it) and by the time I opened it and got her out she had been stung and that was it. The weather conditions at the time were similar to what we have now - a bit too windy and chilly for my liking.

I thought an Aga was a definite requirement for smallholding ! It has probably got more room for warming hypothermic lambs than a Stanley but I have hatched out queens above ours as well, you just have to get the temperature right.

 

[Tremyfro]

I have to say I was surprised to see her cutting her way out this morning. I didn't really think any would survive. I did put a drop of water for moisture and they sat on top of a thick cloth. Interesting though. Let's see if the others emerge too. 3 more in a Tupperware box. They don't look so likely.
Dreadful weather for mating queens. It's really cold again this evening. Tomorrow afternoon is supposed to be better.

 

[tonyofarr]

I had hoped the weather would be better for getting queens mated this year, if only I had started queen rearing a few weeks earlier, I would have lucked out while we had that good weather down here. Last year I had to raise 5 batches of queens to get enough because they kept going missing on mating flights. I still have some older queens I would like to replace, and also 3 colonies with really bad chalk brood that I want to requeen from a different strain.

At the moment I feel a bit fed up with the weather, some colonies have had to be fed, and the ones that haven't are eating their way through all that lovely hawthorn honey that is packed in their supers! I just hope the forecasts are right and it picks up after the next few days, anyway I'm going to raise another batch of queens this week just to be safe.

 

[B+.]

For queen rearing I tend to use an especially built incubator that has full control over heat and humidity... and can accommodate a few hundred queens!

Me too (http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/album.php?albumid=751&pictureid=3727)

 

[oliver90owner]

Good luck if that queen was indeed on a mating flight. You may have about a 50% chance she is fully mated. You new(?) beeks don't consider all the probabilities. So don't be surprised if she gets superceded early.

 

[Tremyfro]

Open mating has to be a pretty hit and miss affair I would think. Certainly, the 4 queens that I had set up in nucs last year, I had varying success with. Although there may have been other influences at work. Since I discovered nosema early this spring, I realise how vigilant I need to be. There are so many variables to keep an eye on.
B+.... That is an impressive set up! Not for the lighthearted.
My Aga queen would have been squished but I thought that it was worth a try as the cell was a good one. Hopefully, she will be going out to mate when the weather improves later this week.
I don't mind having a few locally mated queens as extras but my main colonies are all headed by a carniolan. I have to be mindful of the grandchildren next door...although otherwise the house is fairly isolated.

 

[tonyofarr]

I have been keeping bees for 20 years but only started queen rearing 4 years ago, before that I increased my colonies by making splits and using the queen cells from my best hives. I am still learning through experience, as usual with beekeeping this is learning from mistakes.

The biggest problems I have with getting queens mated are the weather, swallows and a neighbouring beek who kept importing queens to cross with each other (he has now stopped queen rearing but has gone the other way entirely and has not looked at his remaining hives for over a year).

B+ how many queens do you produce a year, and do you artificially inseminate them or use open mating?

 

[Alabamaeee]

I did that at first then decided that it is not a good idea to raise Queens from swarmy hives

 

[B+.]

B+ how many queens do you produce a year, and do you artificially inseminate them or use open mating?

One or two ;-)
http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/album.php?albumid=751