how many emergency Qcs to leave?

[Little John]

Any logic errors with this plan?

Hmm, well yeah - you've left yourself with no insurance ...

You're assuming that one virgin emerges unscathed from each scrap, and that the victorious virgin in each case goes on to be mated successfully. Do you feel lucky ?

On the other hand, if you were to cage the two queen cells, there wouldn't be a potentially damaging scrap - and you could then let one fly to get mated, and keep one for a week (no longer) in reserve.

If you're worried about the possibility of inducing swarming - then put each second virgin into a small mating box with a cupful of bees until the outcome of the primary virgin's mating flight becomes clear.

At least, that's what I would do.

LJ

 

[flemage]

Nope, sounds like a plan to me!

The hard part comes when you then have to leave them alone (not knowing what has happened) to allow the queens to get mated and settle down to lay.

Very worst case, you end up buying new queens in 3-4 weeks time. However most likely outcome you will have new laying queens.

 

[flemage]

My understanding is that there isn’t always a scrap as such, as the first one out will sting through the wall of the others cell?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

My understanding is that there isn’t always a scrap as such, as the first one out will sting through the wall of the others cell?

see post 18 - the thinking now is it's all stage managed so the chosen queen will win without danger of being damaged

 

[flemage]

Even better!

 

[masterBK]

the thinking now is it's all stage managed so the chosen queen will win without danger of being damaged
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have seen virgins fighting and seen one of the queens later with bits missing (part of front leg and in another case a part of one antennae) Perhaps JBM could be kind enough to point me to his source of information as I am always prepared to learn new stuff.

 

[mbc]

You don't want two emerging at the same time as they can do alot of damage to one another in the battle royal

I dont think this is true.
I quite often pull virgins if I come across a recently swarmed hive, deliberately filling the hive with virgins of the same age and letting them sort out who wins the fight.
Tellingly, the chances of a successfully mated queen from this operation is higher than the individual chances of the queens if the colony is split into many parts, each with an unchallenged virgin free to head the colony.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Perhaps JBM could be kind enough to point me to his source of information as I am always prepared to learn new stuff.

Unfortunately I didn't make notes during the talk (I must pay more attention!) it was Given by Wally Shaw - technical officer for the WBKA, wally is a much more informed and well read person than me so he wouldn't have said it unless he had some evidence to support the statement - sorry MBK - I personally would have liked the term of reference as well - I'll email him and ask where he read it

 

[Little John]

I have a high regard for Wally Shaw and his beekeeping knowledge, but nevertheless his opinion may not be true for all colonies, all of the time.

I still think that it would be wiser for a person with only one or two colonies to adopt measures which give some insurance against unforeseen failure, even if such measures turn out afterwards to have been unnecessary - that's the nature of all insurances: 99% of the time they aren't needed. But just once in a while, they are.

LJ

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I have a high regard for Wally Shaw and his beekeeping knowledge, but nevertheless his opinion may not be true for all colonies, all of the time.
LJ

My feeling is the observation was more directed towards supersedure and emergency queens not sure though as it was only an aside in a talk about swarming signs (I was due for an early start to work in the morning so I wasn't concentrating hard enough and forgot to mention it in a chat afterwards), I'm awaiting his reply to my email so we shall see if he can elaborate a bit more

 

[straightman21]

the thinking now is it's all stage managed so the chosen queen will win without danger of being damaged
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have seen virgins fighting and seen one of the queens later with bits missing (part of front leg and in another case a part of one antennae) Perhaps JBM could be kind enough to point me to his source of information as I am always prepared to learn new stuff.

Francis Huber: 'New Observations on the Natural History of Bees', Chapter: 'On the combats of queens; the massacre of the males; and what succeeds in a hive where a stranger queen is substituted for the natural one'. Fascinating reading. The book is free on Kindle and the above chapter starts at page 40. Huber certainly observed the stage managed fights referred to earlier. [of course the only ones who will not have read the book are the bees!!]

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

[of course the only ones who will not have read the book are the bees!!]

And Huber!

 

[mbc]

"how many emergency Qcs to leave?"
Its a trick question, the answer is obviously "none".
Take them all down and put in a proper queen cell.
Do I get a prize ?

 

[masterBK]

If the emergency queen is derived from a one day old worker larvae and is well fed by a strong stock of bees then there is no reason to believe she won't be as good as a queen produced from any other type of queen cell from the same stock.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

If the emergency queen is derived from a one day old worker larvae and is well fed by a strong stock of bees then there is no reason to believe she won't be as good as a queen produced from any other type of queen cell from the same stock.

in the end,that's what you use when grafting queens

 

[mbc]

If the emergency queen is derived from a one day old worker larvae and is well fed by a strong stock of bees then there is no reason to believe she won't be as good as a queen produced from any other type of queen cell from the same stock.

How wrong can you be ?!
I'm not going to do the google work for you but its been well established for over half a century that queens produced under the emergency principle on average have ovaries which weigh far less than those of a queen raised under the supercedure or swarming drivers.
I dont dispute that genetically they may be similar, but for long term egg production a properly raised queen will almost invariably perform better.

 

[mbc]

in the end,that's what you use when grafting queens

Not necessarily, most queen rearing systems rely on the emergency principal to get the larvae accepted as queens but are finished in a queenright arrangement to try and get the best of both worlds;
- high acceptance of cells in an emergency queenless situation,
- full fat, pumped full of food queens, finished by bees who think they're producing supercedure cells in a queenright situation.