Late matings

[beeno]

Hi all,
Thought I try some late matings this year, as I had two nucs to spare and really should have less bees in my garden, and as the long range forecast promised a warm September. Did not have many drones myself, but they were flying and with 240 apiaries in a 10km radius I might be lucky. I wasn't as far as I could determine and was running out of time for winter preps.
One colony eggless since end of July, two test frames later and one introduced QC, I united with an A/S queen with brood over travel screen for a few days and then newspaper. Now has beautiful worker brood. Be interesting to open up come spring, but I will be surprised to find an unmarked queen.
The other one I united above a super full of stores (deep) which I don't normally do, but since the bees are quite feisty this autumn I decided on a slow unite. It would appear that both colonies have moved into super and are chomping through the stores which hopefully is a sign that they are brooding. No collateral damage on the unites.
Did anyone succeed in late matings on this forum as I noticed some hanging in there earlier on on the BBKA website.

 

[Paddington]

Hi beeno,

I have never had much success with queens mated late in the year.

If a queen has managed to mate in our wet and windy Peak District weather, I have found she is often superseded quickly or has a generally higher mortality rate than queens mated earlier.

That's not to say it doesn't sometimes work out, it's just I like to stack the odds in my favour earlier in the season.

 

[drex]

Good on you, but as Mile Palmer says "leave it to the professionals - the bees" . When do bees normally mate? grafted for the first time this year and have new queens in all my colonies, including six nucs which I will overwinter. All done during peak of swarm season. 100% mating success, and colonies really strong going into winter.

 

[masterBK]

I had four supersedure queens emerge about the middle of august that killed their mothers. None of them were mated by end of september. One totaly disappeared in early september and the colony requeened from a spare queen, two queens eventually started laying around the end of september but were unmated so laying only drone only. They were were removed (retired in Bladerunner speak) and replaced by spare queens (parked in apideas). The fourth one is still present but still not laying so presumed unmated. Will need to remove her soon and unite the colony to another one as I have run out of spare queens.

 

[Finman]

.
I had two exceptional late mated queens two years ago. Neither had next spring value, even if they made normal workers.

Another was reared by Apidea. Another came when I joined two hives. Double hive decided to get a new queen.

 

[Goran]

I left one really late.. to see by myself.. Will see in spring what happened.
How is said.. " curiosity killed the cat"..
Before had some September queens, nothing significant different if I recall right.