Queen replacement

[reigate]

I purchased a Nucleus last year which had an overwintered Queen from 2018.
Should the queen be replaced this season or will she be superseded .
Any advice please.

 

[Erichalfbee]

If she’s performing well then why would you. Take a daughter or two off her if you like her.

 

[enrico]

No, you will be fine with her. Work towards using swarm control to end up with a spare hive and therefore a queen. You will find it expensive if you replace with bought queen's every year. That is not necessary for a relative beginner as I assume you are.
E

 

[Swarm]

If she’s performing well then why would you. Take a daughter or two off her if you like her.

No reason why she should not still be contributing to your apiary for a couple of years yet.

 

[E&MBees]

If she’s performing well then why would you. Take a daughter or two off her if you like her.

How do you take a daughter from her?

Do you split the colony (before swarming) by moving the existing queen to a nuc with some brood frames and bees, leaving the original hive queenless which will then cause the remaining bees to raise a new queen from the brood in the original hive?

Thanks.

 

[Erichalfbee]

How do you take a daughter from her?

Do you split the colony (before swarming) by moving the existing queen to a nuc with some brood frames and bees, leaving the original hive queenless which will then cause the remaining bees to raise a new queen from the brood in the original hive?

Thanks.

Exactly
Or nuc the queen and split the rest into two when they have made swarm cells. One cell in each split.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Or Demarree, it also seems to induce the bees to supersede the old queen.

 

[Ian123]

As said by others above the old girl could well turn out to be fine. It does all rather depend on what you wish to achieve though, am guessing atm you only have 1 hive and to be honest that can cause bigger issues than having 10. So are you planning on increasing are you happy with your purchased nuc, you could pick up a queen from the same source? Splitting your only hive into multiple nucs with cells will impact your honey crop. An early queen brought in and introduced to a split should increase your crop, purely depends on what you want!

 

[masterBK]

Most likely (but not guaranteed) a colony with a 2018 queen would make swarm preparations this year. Agree with JBM that demareeing is the way forward with the bonus of getting another box of brood frames drawn at the same time. Queen cells produced by inducing supersedure often better than those produced by the emergency response.

 

[Swarm]

Most likely (but not guaranteed) a colony with a 2018 queen would make swarm preparations this year. Agree with JBM that demareeing is the way forward with the bonus of getting another box of brood frames drawn at the same time. Queen cells produced by inducing supersedure often better than those produced by the emergency response.

Another beekeeping myth? Why would the colony bring on a sub standard queen when they have fresh eggs to work with?

 

[Ian123]

No myth separating the queen from the brood and young nurse bees whilst keeping the colony intact is rather a common way of producing a number of qcells it tends to bee less effective late season but can work well for a good part of the year.

 

[Swarm]

It's not the method I'm referring to it's the part I highlighted. There are good queens and not so good, how they come about is neither here nor there.

 

[Ian123]

It's not the method I'm referring to it's the part I highlighted. There are good queens and not so good, how they come about is neither here nor there.

Well I would say it’s rather relevant if you want better queens, nothing to hand atm but am sure there’s papers/info out there showing emergency queens being poor in comparison to those produced by other methods. It would be awfully easy for breeders/rearers to simply pull a queen from a hive and distribute cells later.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Well I would say it’s rather relevant if you want better queens, nothing to hand atm but am sure there’s papers/info out there showing emergency queens being poor in comparison to those produced by other methods. It would be awfully easy for breeders/rearers to simply pull a queen from a hive and distribute cells later.

And yet there is research showing that bees choose eggs with regal patrilines perhaps throwing doubt on who chooses the better queen? The bees or the grafting tool. It might be an interesting exercise bringing on a box full of emergency cells.

 

[Beefriendly]

To date that has only been studied under emergency queenless/swarming conditions., Don't think it has been examined under "normal" swarming.
The factor that I think they haven't taken into account is sperm clumping in the spermatheca...meaning at at any single time in a hive there will be a disproportionate number of "rare lines" available for the bees to chose queens from.
Think about it...if they have specifically choose only certain "Royal Patrilines" over the last 10,000 years...where have all the other lines come from that they didn't chose?

 

[masterBK]

Hardly ever get a substandard queen using this method (and over 61 years I have used many of the methods used in queen rearing). Only a few queen cells ( typically less than 5) are produced in the top box of a demareed colony. The cells produced are generally large and the larvae well fed. In my experience (by counting backwards from day of capping or from day of emergence) they are usually produced from very young larvae (just hatched). Queen producers often use a demaree top to finish grafted cells started in a queenless starter and transferred to the finisher after 24 hours.

 

[masterBK]

the quality of a queen is partly down to genetics and partly down to how well she was fed and looked after during the larval stage. (the classic "nature V nurture" argument!). It is well known that success in q rearing often depends on how well you prepare the cell builder colonies with lots of young nurse bees, pollen and liquid income (honey or syrup) plus lack of competing brood.

 

[Swarm]

I have a Bulgarian friend who would have a bit of a chuckle reading this, he rears all his queens using the split method.
I mentioned inferior queens, scrub queens and the like and he had a good laugh at that. Pointing to vibrant colonies stacked with supers, he argued that it's beekeepers who classify cells into swarm, supersedure and emergency, the bees are just rearing 'another' queen and would be silly to rear a poor one. In my experience they don't, the colony is bouncing by the time a split is performed.

Grafting, starters, finishers, that's beekeepers trying to get maximum take for multiple new queens, that's a different story altogether.

 

[Beefriendly]

it's also known that the fecundity (number of ovaries) is related to sufficient royal jelly.