artificial swarm subject

[sahtlinurk]

i was reading about different anti swarming measures and the part of making an artificial swarm an author advised to leave two queen cells. just in case. But what about placing both of them in separate cage? So when ever they will emerge they will not throw a cast and you can choose which one to leave.
Of course the chosen queen needs to be released as soon as possible. What is the thinking on these lines? good idea? bad idea? why?

Lauri
PS! Happy new year to everyone!

 

[RoofTops]

I have done this but split the colony into two nucs, each with a queen cell. This works well as you then hopefully have two queens to choose from.

If you carefully caged the cells what are you going to do after they emerge? You still need to get them mated so that means putting them in a nuc or mini-nuc - so you might as well do that from the outset.

 

[sahtlinurk]

but with out splitting them into nuces what bad could happen with the caged queen cells? the chosen queen will be released ASAP to get mated and the second queen used as needed somewhere else.

Lauri

 

[boca]

Mating is a risky enterprise. If you have three nucs, at least one successfully mated queen is almost guaranteed. If you have more than one mated queen, you can evaluate better and select the one you like more.

 

[susbees]

This all assumes that the colony you have AS'd is one you really want to breed from - for all the right reasons.

 

[Finman]

.
When first swarming cells appear, I make several mating nucs from them. They serve different needs of youg quees during summer. later I rear good queens from hives which do not swarm.

One way is change the larvae in the cells and rear good queens in them. So I get about 10 good queens to mate.

In the case of false swarm I am going to use excluder in the brood hive. It sometimes swarms when virgins emerge. It is not rare that some queen cell is hidden there and you do not notice it,

I do not trust two cell system. I prefer to put one cell in lower box and over the excluder I put several queens in the gage. I want to see first what kind of bugg has emerged from a cell.

 

[Midland Beek]

Good idea; difficult to execute without there being natty little cages on the market. Release both queens together and one would assume that they will fight it out.

 

[Finman]

.

3 golden rules for breeding: select, select and select.

Arrange material for selecting.


Queen may be ok, but you see it better when its first workers emerge.
They may say hello to you stings pointing one a'clock. It means 10 seconds to quit.
.