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.
