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If you use the same Apidea, etc. you will have to remove the mated laying Queen, and then very soon afterward put in a sealed Queen Cell, but don't you have to be very careful to make sure there are no eggs or young larvae in the Apidea from the previous Queen otherwise they will start rearing Emergency Queen cells?
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The more manipulations needed the less attractive it becomes for me - having now realised how straightforward it is to directly introduce a mated queen using the Apidea/Kieler as the intro cage I will likely leave the multicycle route for others. I only need to run an early cycle ( and maybe a late cycle) in Apidea /Kielers and can use 2x3 nucs once numbers have built up.
 
I have found it extremely difficult to get my bees in Apidea or Keilers to go through a 2nd cycle - they reject QC, virgin queens, caged virgin queens either introduced immediately, w/wo smoke, after 12h, 24h etc. Therefore I now simply combine the Apideas/Keilers containing mated queens with a queenless nuc - I find this is actually labour saving since there is no need to catch, cage or introduce the queen and I have so far had 100% take. It can be carried out in poor weather (common here) and the new nuc has an additional boost of bees so takes off very quickly.
They will indeed reject virgins, thats for sure. They way to do this is to go back to old basics....remember those coil type queen cell protectors? As the queen is harvested we either put the new cell in right away...and those cells are within 48hrs of hatching, best if even less. Instead of the old style devices we wrap the queen cells in tinfoil, only leaving the very tip, for her to emerge through, exposed. Success rate like this is very high. Pays to be sure they have nectar coming in too, and if not give them some syrup. A very small proportion will fail to accept the new cell...which is generally added within a couple of hours from removal of the previous mated laying queen. If unable to do so we add a pheromone tab until ripe cells are available. If you only have virgins then there is a French plastic cell that has a paper or wax covered tip when allows the virgins to rehatch.

Never ever handle the virgins as this causes the fail rate to rocket, even in fresh first time fill of the box. We never premark the virgins.
 
How do the bees live that long, is it because they're not rearing brood (which shortens their lives)?
- here in NI were didn't have mature Drones until the 2nd/3rd week of May.

We make them up with nice young bees and unless in a great hurry we let them fill maybe 3 combs with brood. The hatching brood self perpetuates them..if they get enough brood we dont have an issue with them dwindling..in fact sometimes the opposite and we have to split them. But...if they are harvested when only eggs present in smallish amounts ..which we often do for our own use with no drop off in acceptance and success rate....then you can get them failing to carry through.

If need be we will replenish them from freshly harvested package bees..even do full remake if the box has been a fail.

You can also take a couple of kg of bees from the honey supers of other hives in the field, inside a 'multibox' (its a yellow plastic package from Slovenia) and soak them in water until they are barely moving. We put little correx landing boards under the mating boxes to be boosted and go round at dusk and dump a small ladle of wet bees at the entrance. In most cases by morning they have crawled in to the Keiller and it is back to strength. Trick learned in Italy.
 
You can also take a couple of kg of bees from the honey supers of other hives in the field, inside a 'multibox' (its a yellow plastic package from Slovenia) and soak them in water until they are barely moving. We put little correx landing boards under the mating boxes to be boosted and go round at dusk and dump a small ladle of wet bees at the entrance. In most cases by morning they have crawled in to the Keiller and it is back to strength. Trick learned in Italy.
That's actually very clever. When I tell that to beginners I'm going to tell them a Scottish Beek told me that ;)
 
*Never ever handle the virgins as this causes the fail rate to rocket, even in fresh first time fill of the box. We never premark the virgins.*

Should clarify this. ANY touching of the virgins taints them in ways imperceptible to us. The bees are pretty fickle at times and anything other than how they smell fresh from the cell decreases acceptance rate.

I have often brought quantities of virgins in from the field from selected lines for Jolanta to use. The rate achieved is NEVER the same as those from the incubator...often only half..and yet these are big rampant virgins that can even eat their way out of tinfoil. We don't carry a lot of cages in the trucks but tinfoil to wrap transferred cells is often to hand....so gets pressed into service to fully wrap hatching stage cells.

To prevent this when using virgins hatched from cells in the incubator (first fill of the mating box is always virgins...not cells.....works far better....) they are first hatched there naturally into hair roller cages. Then the cages are taken to the mating boxes which have been prefilled, and without touching her she is shaken into the top of the mating box through the little hole for inserting cells. The mating boxes have been prefilled and IMMEDIATELY give a pheromone tab to keep them stable, which is only removed at the moment of adding the virgins. Also the bulk bees for filling the box should be from multiple colonies...not one...as the confusion also helps greatly with acceptance.....the same practice we use when making very late nucs.
 
*Never ever handle the virgins as this causes the fail rate to rocket,...

To prevent this when using virgins hatched from cells in the incubator 1st (first fill of the mating box is always virgins...not cells.....works far better....) they are first hatched there naturally into hair roller cages. Then the cages are taken to the mating boxes which have been prefilled, and without touching her she is shaken into the top of the mating box through the little hole for inserting cells. 2nd The mating boxes have been prefilled and IMMEDIATELY give a pheromone tab to keep them stable, which is only removed at the moment of adding the virgins...
1st I've never heard of adding Virgins into Apideas (mating boxes) in preference over sealed Queen Cells, it was my understanding that one always obtained success (say 99%+) when a sealed Queen Cell was introduced into a Apidea.
2nd I thought the standard universally accepted way of making up Apideas was to do so two days before the introduction of the Queen Cell (ideally keep them somewhere dark and cool), do you make them up on the day (add a pheromone strip) and then introduce the Virgin on the same day?

Do you know what the difference in success rate is by introducing untouched emerged Virgins direct into Apideas (with a pheromone strip previously in it), as opposed to introducing a sealed Virgin Cell into an Apidea (made up two days previous, with bees from different hives).


PS: There is some debate about the type of bee, 1. some say it's not important due to the two days, 2. others say it must be Nurse bees - for longer life and nursing tendency (research shows higher success at introduction for a new Queen if the hive/nuc has almost all nurse bees = less aggression towards the new queen; 3. and yet other (very experienced) beeks insist on taking bees only from the Supers, people I know, who have tried this last method, swear by it.

NOTE: I have NEVER used Apideas, but intend to do so this year, previously I used Nucs but the drain on resources is just too much.
 
No that's not what I see, it goes deeper than that, this is something I'm certain of.
Something I _think_ see is that bees nesting close to a small entrance are better at guarding, and those that jump at everything (including beekeepers) tend be the strongest and most productive. I think of them as 'up and at it' bees - they give the impression they can never get in or out of the hive quickly enough.
 
...those that jump at everything (including beekeepers) tend be the strongest and most productive...
That sounds like aggression to me if they're jumping at the beekeeper, a lack of calmness at best (both characteristics are correlated); fecundity and honey yield (although affected by many factors) are genetic traits that has been shown to not be linked to aggression/non-calmness.
I think what you are seeing may be coincidence more than cause and effect. I have found my most docile and calm bees tend to be the most productive, but I know that docileness is not linked to honey yield.
 
and those that jump at everything (including beekeepers) tend be the strongest and most productive.
I think what you are seeing may be coincidence more than cause and effect. I have found my most docile and calm bees tend to be the most productive, but I know that docileness is not linked to honey yield.
Yes, it's just the usual rubbish peddled by keepers of bad bees
 
I think what you are seeing may be coincidence more than cause and effect.

I'm not looking at anyone specifically (in this thread or elsewhere), but as a general observation throughout my "beekeeping life" I've come across numerous situations where people recommending a specific course of action appear to me to have failed to account for the difference between coincidence, correlation and causation. I found this particularly as a beginner (honestly, I still think of myself as a beginnner). It's not just the case in beekeeping to be fair. As I've posted in other threads I'm a qualified swimming coach and I've heard other swimming coaches make the same kind of error, attributing a change in performance to a change they've made when there's no definitive relationship between the two and many other possible causes remain unconsidered. Similar things happen with people who are interested in growing vegetables. I imagine it's the same in many other fields too.

Just because one makes a change or observes a difference A and B happens does not mean that A causes B. Even if there is a plausibly logical chain of events relating B to A doesn't make it definitely true. Nor even necessarily if one can't see any other way that B could happen other than as a result of A.

In my view this is one of the hardest parts of science to get right and one reason why peer review is so important. It's a natural (and powerful) part of the human cognitive process to create patterns, but sometimes that means we see patterns that really aren't there.

James
 
Answers spliced in italics.

1st I've never heard of adding Virgins into Apideas (mating boxes) in preference over sealed Queen Cells, it was my understanding that one always obtained success (say 99%+) when a sealed Queen Cell was introduced into a Apidea.

Our success rate on the *first round* was sharply increased when going to introducing virgins. Never got close to 99% with cells. We learned there is much tosh spoken about such things....use virgins first time...protected cells thereafter.

2nd I thought the standard universally accepted way of making up Apideas was to do so two days before the introduction of the Queen Cell (ideally keep them somewhere dark and cool), do you make them up on the day (add a pheromone strip) and then introduce the Virgin on the same day?

The period before adding the virgin is quite unnecessary. However keep them in the dark and cool for up to FOUR days afterwards to achieve unity and start drawing the wax. Never leave them for long periods in a hopelessly queenless condition as they WILL start producing laying workers.....and the more AMM in them the faster it happens. AMM are not the worst, iberica and sicula even more so but you do not meet either of those much in a UK/Irish setting.. Just mention this as it is probably quite relevant to an NI situation.

All experience gained over several seasons...never know it all, make tweaks every year. Now know ideal temp to keep them in in the dark is actually 5C or a little above.


Do you know what the difference in success rate is by introducing untouched emerged Virgins direct into Apideas (with a pheromone strip previously in it), as opposed to introducing a sealed Virgin Cell into an Apidea (made up two days previous, with bees from different hives).

Takes OUR average up for first round successes by at least 30%.


PS: There is some debate about the type of bee, 1. some say it's not important due to the two days, 2. others say it must be Nurse bees - for longer life and nursing tendency (research shows higher success at introduction for a new Queen if the hive/nuc has almost all nurse bees = less aggression towards the new queen; 3. and yet other (very experienced) beeks insist on taking bees only from the Supers, people I know, who have tried this last method, swear by it.

Tbh it is not something to be too religious about. Making up the bulk bees from the supers tends to exclude the very young freshly hatched bees, but is almost entirely bees of a perfect age for comb drawing and very flexible age for taking any duties. However...most of those making up bulk bees from supers smoke heavily at the entrance, driving lots of bees up into the supers. Then repeat, and after a few minutes more take the whole super away to the shaking stand. Its fast, gets lots of bees, and as there is an excluder in place it avoids time consuming queen searching and takes MOSTLY correct age bees and zero drones.. The only ones you do not want too many of are the old flying bees who are the grumpy ones that hinder acceptance, and the very young bees who are not yet physiologically robust enough to be undamaged by the process. Packages in Italy are made up pretty much this way. We have for a couple of years run a special group on 6 bar Paynes boxes, with a metal excluder on top, and then an upper box. Smoke heavily every ten days or so and shake all the bees from the upper box, then feed to push the queen along. Gives a constant supply of correct age range bees and also stops the nucs from swarming. It also works well over a period at equalising as the smaller ones give no bees to start with so are not drained, but all come up to be much the same mid season.

NOTE: I have NEVER used Apideas, but intend to do so this year, previously I used Nucs but the drain on resources is just too much.

Agree completely on that, Unless you are dealing with very small numbers it can take away an unfortunately large proportion of the unit, also full frame size mating units turn out the queens more slowly. Even a trial unit of miniplus ones we had were a few days slower...not much of an issue to most but it means a queen less per box per season. We have observed no difference in performance between queens produced in larger units and those from mini boxes. Our preference for Keillers is they are a bit more stable than Apideas or similar and the box is cheap...its also really easy to harvest the queens...with the small units reaching inside if the queen is on the walls blocks sight of her..which is awkward.. Again...only a problem cumulatively over large numbers.
 
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Just because one makes a change or observes a difference A and B happens does not mean that A causes B. Even if there is a plausibly logical chain of events relating B to A doesn't make it definitely true. Nor even necessarily if one can't see any other way that B could happen other than as a result of A.

Yes...the 'post hoc fallacy'.

Small samples sizes and limited time ranges leaves small units susceptible to making assertions based on assumptions that do not stand the test of large trials on multi season situations. We have very large sample sizes, and whilst the number of variables may be huge, sample size does tend to minimise their effect.

Have made plenty of 'post hoc' errors in the past...probably will do so again.
 
*Never ever handle the virgins as this causes the fail rate to rocket, even in fresh first time fill of the box. We never premark the virgins.*

Should clarify this. ANY touching of the virgins taints them in ways imperceptible to us. The bees are pretty fickle at times and anything other than how they smell fresh from the cell decreases acceptance rate.

I have often brought quantities of virgins in from the field from selected lines for Jolanta to use. The rate achieved is NEVER the same as those from the incubator...often only half..and yet these are big rampant virgins that can even eat their way out of tinfoil. We don't carry a lot of cages in the trucks but tinfoil to wrap transferred cells is often to hand....so gets pressed into service to fully wrap hatching stage cells.

To prevent this when using virgins hatched from cells in the incubator (first fill of the mating box is always virgins...not cells.....works far better....) they are first hatched there naturally into hair roller cages. Then the cages are taken to the mating boxes which have been prefilled, and without touching her she is shaken into the top of the mating box through the little hole for inserting cells. The mating boxes have been prefilled and IMMEDIATELY give a pheromone tab to keep them stable, which is only removed at the moment of adding the virgins. Also the bulk bees for filling the box should be from multiple colonies...not one...as the confusion also helps greatly with acceptance.....the same practice we use when making very late nucs.
V good tips there Murray to improve acceptance. Also completely the same advice as Jonathan Getty gave on a webinar about Apideas. He showed a video from Italy where virgin was v dipped in water (still in Cage) then dropped without cage, into bottom of Apidea followed by a ladle of damp bees (sprayed with water) collected from multiple hives. He always uses virgin queen first followed by protected
queen cells round 2, then refreshes nurse bees 3rd round.
Thanks for the tips, really helps when a bee farmer with so much experience shares his / her knowledge
 
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