This beekeeping is all or nothing!

[Tremyfro]

So last week after attempting some grafting.....found 2 big queen cells on the comb....clearly they weren't impressed with my beekeepers skills....so transferred the QC s to nucs with food and bees and capped brood...dummied down with Selotex. So with the split for the Buckfast Queen....3 colonies..a split and 2 nucs.
Today there were 4 more Queen cells.....2 stuck together and 2 separate ones. So made 3 more nucs. Going to watch the nuc with the 2 Queen cells and if very lucky might be able to catch the first to emerge before she kills the second one!
Even though I haven't been successful at grafting the larvae yet...I have been really lucky and already have 5 nucs. Now God and the weather need to help these Queens emerge and get mated. Otherwise I will have a tower block if I have to recombine!
I now have the cleanest queen cups you have ever seen! So when the colony has recovered...going to have another go at grafting. Only need 2 more queens....one to re queen hive 3 and one for the final nuc. I have decided that the Queen in Hive 2 can stay as the hive is far less buzzy than I had thought...compared to some I have seen recently.
Has anyone else been having a first go at grafting? My bees thought I was rubbish at it!

 

[Obee1]

Hi trembly
What tool did you use to graft. I found an interesting website yesterday where someone used a fine brush. Have you come across it. Really intersesting guy. Does research into bee virus too.

http://theapiarist.org/grafting/

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

Hi trembly

What tool did you use to graft. I found an interesting website yesterday where someone used a fine brush. Have you come across it. Really intersesting guy. Does research into bee virus too.



http://theapiarist.org/grafting/

A brush worked well for me as per that url. I was cheating a bit thpugh, using their own empty supersedure cups in a Demaree. My favourire part so far, making Qs.

 

[For want of a better word]

Well done
My only concern would be what your F1s will find to mate with, keep good records and cull any that are not what you would wish for.

Yeghes da

 

[Thymallus]

Similar experience with Buckfast has shown that the F1's are usually fine, some even better than mum...(hybrid vigour)....it's the the next generation (F2's) you need to watch. Perhaps better to not breed this far. But worth experimenting with. My limited experience of F2's are Fine/and queen killed.....Although a total of 2 F2's is not really representative of a general trend. The bad F2's are about the same as my worst (now-ex) local bees.

 

[Tremyfro]

I was thinking about the queens I will breed...I spoke to Paynes...as that was where I got my Queen. I was reassured that the F1 queens will be ok. We will see....if any turn out not so good...I can always re queen. I used a Chinese grafting tool but it was really tricky...it kept getting stuck on the wax or flicking the larvae out or up the wall. I will take a look at the link....

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

Sorry: are we talking about temperament?

 

[Tremyfro]

Sorry: are we talking about temperament?

I think so.....but also about a queen which lays a good pattern of brood too...

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

Well done
My only concern would be what your F1s will find to mate with, keep good records and cull any that are not what you would wish for.

Yeghes da

Similar experience with Buckfast has shown that the F1's are usually fine, some even better than mum...(hybrid vigour)....it's the the next generation (F2's) you need to watch. Perhaps better to not breed this far. But worth experimenting with. My limited experience of F2's are Fine/and queen killed.....Although a total of 2 F2's is not really representative of a general trend. The bad F2's are about the same as my worst (now-ex) local bees.

I was thinking about the queens I will breed...I spoke to Paynes...as that was where I got my Queen. I was reassured that the F1 queens will be ok. We will see....if any turn out not so good...I can always re queen. I used a Chinese grafting tool but it was really tricky...it kept getting stuck on the wax or flicking the larvae out or up the wall. I will take a look at the link....

A brush worked really well, as I said. No flicking and the surface tension held the larva nicely.

All: with permission, I am going to hijack. You have really worried me; I am overstocked in a suburban setting and need my bees to behave like Buckfasts or at least good mongrels.

I have three main lines, a Hivemaker (Pete Little) Buckfast Q, a Paynes Buckfast Q of less certain lineage and getting older, and [the daughter of] a Paynes mongrel. I put up a LOT of drones, mainly sons of the Hivemaker Q because I usually do not use foundation and only cull when a really good opportunity presents. I had been working towards having all my Qs be descended from the Hivemaker Buckfast (hence the grafting: 2 daughters are in development). Another colony is a direct descendant of the Paynes Buckfast and I must say seems to be my weakest. My mongrels are strong, reasonably good-tempered but annoyingly swarmy (BAD in my setting); they had to be A/Sed about 21 April.

Should I just suck up the swarminess and breed from the mongrels, or try and circulate Buckfast drones among three or so related colonies? I'm not on an island, obviously, but the area is not that heavily populated with bees.

 

[madasafish]

Should I just suck up the swarminess and breed from the mongrels, or try and circulate Buckfast drones among three or so related colonies? I'm not on an island, obviously, but the area is not that heavily populated with bees.

Raise LOTS of drones from the queens you want to breed with..Then your chances of mating - or rather your queens' chances of mating - with a mongrel drone are much less.

It's all about numbers...

 

[Finman]

.
The colony made emergency cells and you splitted frames to nucs. Or what what is going

The quality of queens will be poor that way.

You could graft better larvae to the energency cells. In one compact hive queens will be reared well. When cells are almost emerging, you could make nucs. But in same yard nuc bees will return to their original site.

It is not rare that bees abandon grafted cells and want to make their own.

Put all together and graft new larvae to emwrgency cells.

 

[For want of a better word]

My own experience with F1 is that is best to requeen EVERY year with bees bred by a specialist who knows exactly what they are doing, and has the resources ( and a reputation of excellence to keep) to breed from good selected stock.
NOT something easily undertaken on a hobbyist level.
Professional breeders have hundreds of colonies, a dedicated and well trained staff, and an area that they can manage to isolate their breeder stock.
Hence the Danish and German F1 breeding islands in the Baltic.

I can not see how any hobbyist can get repeated quality by open mating... particularly when the beekeeper down the road keeps Greeks, another Carniolian, Cepolian, Causican, Heinz 57 etc etc.??????????????


Yeghes da

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

.
The colony made emergency cells and you splitted frames to nucs. Or what what is going

The quality of queens will be poor that way.

You could graft better larvae to the energency cells. In one compact hive queens will be reared well. When cells are almost emerging, you could make nucs. But in same yard nuc bees will return to their original site.

It is not rare that bees abandon grafted cells and want to make their own.

Put all together and graft new larvae to emwrgency cells.

I demareed my favourite Queen's colony and they made supersedure cells but were too slow figuring out what was going on to fill them so I grafted into them.

My own experience with F1 is that is best to requeen EVERY year with bees bred by a specialist who knows exactly what they are doing, and has the resources ( and a reputation of excellence to keep) to breed from good selected stock.
NOT something easily undertaken on a hobbyist level.
Professional breeders have hundreds of colonies, a dedicated and well trained staff, and an area that they can manage to isolate their breeder stock.
Hence the Danish and German F1 breeding islands in the Baltic.

I can not see how any hobbyist can get repeated quality by open mating... particularly when the beekeeper down the road keeps Greeks, another Carniolian, Cepolian, Causican, Heinz 57 etc etc.??????????????


Yeghes da

I do think of a Hivemaker Q in terms of being only 7 jars of honey...

 

[Erichalfbee]

All: with permission, I am going to hijack. You have really worried me; I am overstocked in a suburban setting and need my bees to behave like Buckfasts or at least good mongrels.

All my Buckfasts have been from Hivemaker. They are excellent and mostly do not swarm the following year. F2 is good and I have had no problems. F3 have been my nastiest lot and I requeened one with a new HM queen but let the other raise the next generation F4? These are amongst my best bees, their gentleness has returned and they are my largest and most productive colony.

 

[madasafish]

I have a mix : buckfast, carnies, and mongrels. I requeen# every two years and occasionally buy buckfast in emergencies.

Yes I get a few nasty queens about 1/year - but I squish and requeen in autumn - mine have never been so bad as to be intolerable. (And that's in five years of beekeeping)


# home raised and mated..I don't graft - eyesight - and use the Miller method.. Mini nucs and TBH nucs for mating. Overwinter 2-3 TBH nucs for uniting with Q- in spring.

All kept in our garden so I have to have good tempered bees. Mrs Madasafish has been stung once- a bee on her washing.

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

All my Buckfasts have been from Hivemaker. They are excellent and mostly do not swarm the following year. F2 is good and I have had no problems. F3 have been my nastiest lot and I requeened one with a new HM queen but let the other raise the next generation F4? These are amongst my best bees, their gentleness has returned and they are my largest and most productive colony.

Thanks Erica; really useful and I can calm down because I can ride out the occasional rogue generation and at worst just have to bank a few queens, maybe swapping the nasty ones into a nuc to manage them and ironically, based on what you say about F3 v F4, breeding from them.

 

[Tremyfro]

I have found the whole experience very interesting. I am going to have another go at the grafting....to see if I can get my bees to make a few extra queens from my best queen. At the moment the hive is recovering from my disturbances! Hive 2 ...which I have always called my buzzy hive ...has had a stay of execution. This hive made lots of honey last year despite starting as a 5 frame nuc in May. Also...having spent some time recently around other people's bees....I have come to realise that the hive is actually ok. The bees are curious but we rarely use much smoke...none at all the last few times we opened the hive. It was just that compared to the Carniolans in Hive 1 ....they seemed much more buzzy. However....the daughter of Hive 2 is for the chop....they haven't done much...other than sting my OH when he was working at the back of the hive...several yards away.....but are a very nosy lot which will eventually become a nuisance when I eventually put bees in the long hive nearby. So ...for me ...in regard to breeding....the criteria....is calmness and calmness and some honey.

 

[Thymallus]

With only a few Buckfast queens and potentially 100's (if not more) local bee hives in the potential mating area.......I simply assume that any of my girls will mate with the locals and not preferentially with Buckfast drones...hence you are always on descending spiral. Flooding with drones from the same queen is not going to work as you will end up with diploid drones from any such incestuous mating's. And even you have lots of other Buckfast hives to use to flood an area with Buckfast drones I think it is still unlikely to work.
It's a one way street of buying a breeding queen every few years or sharing one. Breeding F1's whilst you can and simply accept that unless you go down II or can find isolated mating sites this is what you need to do.

Not everyone's choice, hence there is usually controversy attached to this. The plus side is nice calm bees productive bees to work with and to be honest my ex-F2 was no worse than my average "local bees" and no way near my worst. But a sample of one is not really representative. Perhaps others have tales to tell of their F2's?

 

[Thymallus]

F2 is good and I have had no problems. F3 have been my nastiest lot and I requeened one with a new HM queen but let the other raise the next generation F4? These are amongst my best bees, their gentleness has returned and they are my largest and most productive colony.

Interesting stuff. Do they still have the coloration of Buckfast or reverted to native? My F2's are noticeably local in character.

Off topic my best local hive (temperament wise) seems to have picked some Italian studs as lots of yellow. Of course I realize that colour is not the best way to determine a bees background, just an indication.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Yes, still a lot of bees with that orange stripe.
My neighbour has bees that "have suddenly become orange and I don't have a clue how"