Queen cell failure rate

[madasafish]

I currently have about 25 mating nucs in an area of my garden, a little over 200 square metres in size with semi mature trees surrounding. We are surrounded by farmland with some natural old riparian woodland (hazel) close by. All mating nucs are in shade under/in hedges and trees. I deliberately avoided placing any mating nucs in my other apiaries this year.


Too many mating nucs in the one spot with queens being attracted back to the wrong mating nuc? Thoughts please?
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Compared to US mating apiaries, small beer.
Are all your mating nucs different colours? I mean the colour bees can see: mainly blue/yellow and different patterns?

If not, returning queen can go back to wrong hive easily. Most mating sites us different colour roofs/fronts

 

[foghornleghorn]

I currently have about 25 mating nucs in an area of my garden, a little over 200 square metres in size with semi mature trees surrounding. We are surrounded by farmland with some natural old riparian woodland (hazel) close by. All mating nucs are in shade under/in hedges and trees. I deliberately avoided placing any mating nucs in my other apiaries this year.

I do not consider that my queen losses from the mating nucs have anything to do with a lack of bees in the mating nucs as I have lost queens from newly stocked apideas as well as apideas that have already produced one or two mated and laying queens. These apideas have plenty of bees in them. I cut out brood and rewax frames in addition to swapping out brood to stop them becoming overcrowded.

Too many mating nucs in the one spot with queens being attracted back to the wrong mating nuc? Thoughts please?

I have 12 selected (full) stocks approx 200m away from the garden and queen mating site. I am keeping mating nucs away from full stocks in case queens are attracted back to them on their way back from orientation/mating flights.

The only way to find out would be to number queens I would think

 

[Teemore]

MAting nucs are all at varied heights and have differing entrance orientations. I read somewhere (possibly this forum) that bees are particularly sensitive to entrance/nest height in terms of their navigational skills. Mating Nucs are variously coloured Land Rover Green, a near white and Apidea brown.
Its a fair point on numbering queens and one to consider if i revert to using an incubator. Queens could be readily numbered when taking them out of the incubator but that is an added "extra". My beekeeping (and I include queen rearing in that) remains a hobby, albeit a productive and time consuming one so I'll stick to the KISS principle for now..