Queen Life Span

[Millet]

Apart from the obvious of a drone laying Queen at what age would you call it a day before she gets the squash, or would you leave her too it until she is superceded.

 

[REDWOOD]

Check on the laying pattern. Some queens still do very well after 4 years but most hives will get a new queen before they are over 3 years old. Queens are the most prolific in their second year

 

[B+.]

Apart from the obvious of a drone laying Queen at what age would you call it a day before she gets the squash, or would you leave her too it until she is superceded.

If she's a good queen, even her drones are worth having.
I had a fantastic 2013 queen that I wanted to breed from last year. Unfortunately, they reared a daughter and she was superceded before I managed to graft any of her larvae.

 

[Swarm]

There's a guy in West Wales who has a five year old queen happily laying away alongside her daughter. Leave it to the bees to decide.

 

[Millet]

If she's a good queen, even her drones are worth having.
I had a fantastic 2013 queen that I wanted to breed from last year. Unfortunately, they reared a daughter and she was superceded before I managed to graft any of her larvae.

This is only my third season with the same Queen so i can not really judge on the performance against other Queens, however i do know that they can be pretty aggressive at times, my plan was to buy a Nuc with a calmer strain and make new queens from that colony next year and then squash all my original Queens and unite the Queenless colonies over the new colonies of calmer bees, do this think that is possible.

 

[Millet]

There's a guy in West Wales who has a five year old queen happily laying away alongside her daughter. Leave it to the bees to decide.

I would leave them to it but i do not want them to swarm if i can help it.

 

[Beefriendly]

This is only my third season with the same Queen so i can not really judge on the performance against other Queens, however i do know that they can be pretty aggressive at times, my plan was to buy a Nuc with a calmer strain and make new queens from that colony next year and then squash all my original Queens and unite the Queenless colonies over the new colonies of calmer bees, do this think that is possible.

You might find it marginally cheaper to buy in as many queens as you have hives and re-queen each one. If one fails you can unite to a successful re-queening.
They retail around £35 a queen whereas a nuc will set you back upwards of £150.

Unless you have strong views on queen types I'd possibly suggest Carniolans that have been bred in a country that only has Carniolans (e.g Slovenia) so you can breed at least one generation of new Carniolan queens from them before they start to become mongrelised.

 

[Millet]

You might find it marginally cheaper to buy in as many queens as you have hives and re-queen each one. If one fails you can unite to a successful re-queening.
They retail around £35 a queen whereas a nuc will set you back upwards of £150.

Unless you have strong views on queen types I'd possibly suggest Carniolans that have been bred in a country that only has Carniolans (e.g Slovenia) so you can breed at least one generation of new Carniolan queens from them before they start to become mongrelised.

Thank you for that, i am still pretty clueless as far as re queening and strains of bees go and the last thing i want to do is cause the death of any new queens from inexperience, i do have experience however in uniting a queen - colony over a queen + colony that is why i was thinking of going down that route.