I am making some starter hives with a difference and need advice

[nottingham]

Hi,

I am going to make a few starter hives to increase the amount of colonies I have. Hoping to start in 3 - 4 weeks time.

I was thinking of letting the queen lay in a super on top of the BB and graft into wax cups on a super frame above the QX (about 10 - 12 cells)

(Not forgetting to put the Queen back into the BB below the QX once grafted cells. I'll say that before I upset any beek's and start saying i've been shoot down lol)

Then the plan is/was? to put two super frames into a small handmade nuc with one of brood and the second frame being the queen cells.

Then take the nuc with the two super frames to an out Apiary five miles away from the main Apiary. Then let the queens brake out the cells and let war of the queens start.

The idea is to let the strongest queen win and let her mate.

Will this work or is it unworkable. PLEASE be honest with me as I am asking to learn, not to get upset by the answer.

I hope I have explained myself well.

Thank You

 

[Midland Beek]

Don't like doing things the easy way then?

 

[Gardenbees]

Kind of. You'd need a big, busy colony to actually raise up the queen cells in the top broodbox to within a day or two of hatching, and you could then put them all into one mini-nuc with a handful of workers and let the hatching queens duke it out. However, there are a couple of snags with this (cue everyone else telling me I've got this wrong/incomplete!!):

Firstly, the "winner" queen out of a bunch of hatching cells can be damaged by the battles, leaving you with a disappointing result for all that trouble - especially if the damage is bad enough to prevent her mating. Personally I would use several small apideas or cut-down nucs (with feeders), prepare them just before the queens were about to hatch, give them a queen cell each and raise a few more queens rather than risk losing all of them. This would give you the basis of several new colonies.

Secondly, if you only allow one queen to get as far as mating and producing brood, the crucial question of whether that brood is any good will be out of your control.... if it isn't, you'll either have to repeat the whole process or buy in a good queen, or unite your nuc workers with another colony. Or put up with a sub-standard new colony. Therefore, if you have the time and space it's nice to keep several new queens going for a few weeks until you're sure of which little colony is doing well. This allows for quality-control. You could then give away any spare good ones, ditch any queens where the new colony was stroppy or had higher than average varroa levels, etc., and unite the spare workers. Or shake the spare workers together like a package, and give them your favourite out of the new queens, with suitable nuc frames from elsewhere.

That was a rather crude description of queenright queen raising! As with so many topics, there is more than one good account of how to do this on Dave Cushman's website.

I've only ever witnessed this once, years and years ago, and it was a success: 9 out of 10 cells hatched OK, but one queen produced strikingly bad-tempered offspring, whilst the others were fine. Needless to say Mrs Stroppy ended up on the bird-table and her riot-grrl offspring were unceremoniously evicted! If you let all your successfully hatched queens fight it out, then you reduce your ability to weed out dodgy ones further down the line.

The reason I'm giving a detailed answer is because this is the kind of thing I'm planning for this year!

 

[Gardenbees]

Don't like doing things the easy way then?

The easy way is less fun!!

 

[nottingham]

I just thought it might cut down on the amount on queen losses while breeding or is this a wrong assumption to make? If there was a fight to become the stongest queen. Thus the winner, wouldn't that better the chance of that queen mating successfully?
Raver than putting out out 10 mating hives with a virgin queen in each and only 2 - 4 queens mating successfully.

 

[Gardenbees]

Yes, I see your point. However, if there's not enough drones for four queens, there may not be enough for any! Most of us live nearer to other colonies than we realise, and it would be very bad luck if your new queens didn't find enough drones. And the remaining queen may be damaged - even if she mates, her colony might not be a success. If you want less trouble and/or a good chance of mating, perhaps just try two or three mating nucs?

I would still always like to keep the "quality control" option personally.

 

[nottingham]

GB Thank You for your very good reply. I now understand it a bit better.

But when the bees become queenless within the swarming season for what ever reason. Yet mainly because the beekeeper has killed her by mistake while closing up the hive. The bees use 3 or less days old larvae to make an emergency queen. But when they make an emergency queen, how many queen cells would the bees make to raise a queen that would become fertile and get them through the rest of the season and through the winter?

 

[Gardenbees]

You're likely to get a lot of different answers to that! But for a supercedure, i.e. deliberate replacement of an old or damaged queen, usually "not many" (perhaps only one or two), and for an emergency, "either not many or quite a few". I've never seen more than about 7 at once, or less than two, although if the beekeeper doesn't step in, they can run up way more than that - the first bit of research I Googled is here:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/u60305g6l0777333/
and they found an average of 20 cells (over a third of which died off) in an experimental setting, with 49 emergency cells in one hive.

Emergency queen rearing isn't usually considered a very desirable way of getting new queens, as you've probably gathered, although the first colony I ever looked after had one and it did pretty well for a couple of years.

 

[Tim1606]

Queen rearing simplified by Vince Cook

Highly recomend it

 

[oliver90owner]

Let's start a litle further back. How many of these mini nucs are you planning. No point in leving good queens to scrap it out if you intend to increase by, say, ten.

Cannot see any point in wasting at least half your new queens and at worst around 90%.

RAB

 

[Finman]

.
You have one hive. Let it grow as big as it can. If you now start to make those queens, you probably spoil your hive.

Best queen wins when they fight. It is just a dream. In what meaning the best? Most evil or longest sting?

When your hive has 4 boxes full of bees, make one nuc and bye a laying queen.

 

[Adam]

If there was a fight to become the stongest queen. Thus the winner, wouldn't that better the chance of that queen mating successfully?

Or the least knackered wins. I am not aware that any research has confirmed that a queen that overcomes adversity in the form of fighting to the death goes on to become more likely to mate correctly.

It's also not clear from your description which colony are you using as the cell raiser. Is it the main colony with the queen in?

Adam

 

[Skyhook]

Sorry Nottingham, I can't think of anything good about it. You're going to put your grafted cells into a tiny little nuc to raise, with hardly enough bees to keep them warm let alone produce the large amounts of brood food needed. Supposing they get over this, your small, undernourished queens emerge a couple of weeks later. They then kick the crap out of each other, until one is left, in a similar condition to Bruce Willis 5 minutes before the end of the film. Supposing she's still able to fly, she goes off on her mating flight- assuming that there are other colonies to provide drones in the area, and that they have started produv=cing drones early enough to match your timetable.

Remember, you did promise not to get upset

 

[nottingham]

I am so glad I asked for some advice, as it seem that this form of queen mating and building new colonies is floored. To much risk of wasting a lot of time and losing to many bees too.

Thank You very much to everyone that contributed to my thread.

 

[Adam]

Is there any reason you wouldn't want to try one of the simple, tried and tested methods of queen rearing before you attempt to create your own?

They mostly derive from beekeepers with hundreds and hundreds of hive years of queen rearing.

Adam

 

[nottingham]

I will try to rear a few queens and put each queen in a rearing nuc, yet I just wanted to know how it may turn out if I did it with a group of queen cells together. Now I have my answer. So Thank You Adam for your help. I think it would be a very good idea if I bought another nuc of bees too.

 

[onriver]

I'm not sure I'd worry about buying a new nuc (though if you can get one don't say no!) your bees will most likely want to reproduce in April / May, unless your lucky or good (?!). Work with the bees and, when you find a nice, carefully and deliberately produced queen cell, take that as the signal to multiply your bees by moving that frame and some bees. Loads of more specific advice around if needed You'll end up, I hope, with a strong queen in a nuc you have control over.