Two queen system

[Chris B]

How about a no-queen system?

Brother Adam describes a system in one of his books. It goes something like this:

Some weeks before the main flow, kill the old queen. About 10 days later, destroy all queen cells before they emerge, and put a new mated queen in.

The 10 days worth of lost brood represents bees that would only have become foragers after the main flow so no loss to the honey yield.
Combination of new queen and a brood break kills swarming urge for remainder of the season, plus the bees work with the vigour of a new swarm at just the right time.

He liked the system but eventually dropped it because it worked well for the clover but not for the heather which was more important for him.

The important point is, whatever system you use, it has to match the circumstances you find yourself in and tally with your objectives. The 2 queen system is used in NZ, but for them the important crop is Manuka which is late season a bit like our heather. So I wouldn't dismiss the system out of hand (they are far from stupid in NZ), but that doesn't mean it translates well to UK beekeeping where we get nowhere near as much good weather, so it's a bit riskier trying to get your bees to peak at a particular time, when the weather decides to peak at a different time.

 

[Finman]

.
Big flow plants here are raspberry, rape and fireweed.

It is rare that they are in same good foraging area. It is difficult to find this mixture. Distance means much.

Trust on one plant may give a zero result.

Fireweed on burned cutting area

 

[Goran]

Brother Adam describes a system in one of his books. It goes something like this:

Some weeks before the main flow, kill the old queen. About 10 days later, destroy all queen cells before they emerge, and put a new mated queen in.

The 10 days worth of lost brood represents bees that would only have become foragers after the main flow so no loss to the honey yield.
Combination of new queen and a brood break kills swarming urge for remainder of the season, plus the bees work with the vigour of a new swarm at just the right time.

He liked the system but eventually dropped it because it worked well for the clover but not for the heather which was more important for him.

The important point is, whatever system you use, it has to match the circumstances you find yourself in and tally with your objectives. The 2 queen system is used in NZ, but for them the important crop is Manuka which is late season a bit like our heather. So I wouldn't dismiss the system out of hand (they are far from stupid in NZ), but that doesn't mean it translates well to UK beekeeping where we get nowhere near as much good weather, so it's a bit riskier trying to get your bees to peak at a particular time, when the weather decides to peak at a different time.

Instead of killing the queen, I'll rather make nuc with her, and leave two queen cells in a hive and again no swarming, working mood back.
About the forage bees, the more important are young bees who take the honey from foragers. But to level the colonies before the great flow, some says is not advisable, and I don't use it for now..who knows..
About bad weather, have You some experiences with alpine hives in UK?

 

[richardbees]

Chris, for us in middling England with no specific bee forage ...aren't we better off with a box of brood and adding supers over a QE?

 

[Finman]

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To find good pastures is the most difficult job in my beekeeping.
It is a real challenge. I have been on same areas now 30 years and have found that some areas are like traps. They seem good, but gives poor yield.

I have been 6 times in England. Once we drived trough Wales.

The difference to my country is that everything is carefylly used to pastures, to cultivation, house yards, roads or somehow constructed. We visited even in Robin Hood forest. It is winter flooding area near Milton Keynes.

We have plenty of forests.

Field are deep drained and there there is no field verges. Only yield plant on fields is spring rape. Herbicides have killed meadow flowers away 40 years ago. Some meadows are on poor lands but they give nothing.

Fresh soil forest cutting areas are best pastures for their various plants which give different aromas to honey.

EU has demanded that it is not allowed to keep waste lands.

But those natural pastures changes in few years. They will get bushes and hay.
Soon 100 kg average yield drops to 20 kg.

Farming methods have changed many times during 3o years. There is no cows much but all kind of horses are everywhere. Blooming clover has disapeared.

When hay field was cutted once a year, now it is cutted 5 times, just when something begins to open flowers.

 

[Finman]

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Hay field harvest harvest methods have changed and gives now nothing to bees.

20 years ago

50 years ago

 

[Chris B]

Chris, for us in middling England with no specific bee forage ...aren't we better off with a box of brood and adding supers over a QE?

Yes I think so. Better to worry about improving your bees than anything else. Then worry about improving their location ("good pastures" Finman). If you get those 2 right you're 90% there IMHO.

 

[Finman]

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Improving bees.

50 years ago when I stated old farts have old fashion beehives. They told me that new queens are nothing. They have tried.
'
'The old hive was so that it had a brood box and in summer they put another box for honey. Yield was 15 kg per hive. They did not extracted the lower box because bees hit so much stings.

OK, then you put a queen into 2 box system, which actually needs 2 box merely for laying.

If you have customed to nurse a small hive, a good layer will be a surprise what to do.

Many here too have shown that they put a suoer on, and themn they wait that it is tidely capped. Then a new box.
Very few have mentioned that one capped box need actually 3 supers.

Yes, from where those numerous swarms come. If rape blooms very near, a small colony fills the hive in a couple of days and only way is swarm then.

If you do not extract, from where you get new combs.

 

[richardbees]

EU has demanded that it is not allowed to keep waste lands.

That is not strictly true.

In the UK farmers are given most of the EU subsidy for leaving a % of their land as "set aside" hopefully to become wild flower meadows. Also for 10 m strips to be left next to the hedge at the edge of each field to provide a wild life habitat.

Also in urban areas e.g greater London, Town Planning regulations contain preservation areas for wild life including "Green corridors" which are mainly strings of land alongside railways that must be left wild to allow wildlife to migrate etc.

Thanks for your pics......."Fireweed" so called because it flourished in London's bombed-out areas after WW2 (high potash)

 

[Hivemaker.]

EU has demanded that it is not allowed to keep waste lands.

That is not strictly true.

In the UK farmers are given most of the EU subsidy for leaving a % of their land as "set aside"

Ended for many, and coming to an end soon for the rest.

 

[Finman]

[B
In the UK farmers are given most of the EU subsidy for leaving a % of their land as "set aside" hopefully to become wild flower meadows. )

Those flowers have not much to do with honey plants. We have here some catalogues and I do not know who makes them.

If you want good bee plants which agressively survive among others plants, you must plant species, which are known as bad weeds.

 

[Finman]

.
What pastures have to do with queen or douple queen or with douple brood or what ever.

It is nectar in flowers what you are harvesting. Distance from flowers to hives is highly important.

Bees may fly several kilometres to forage rape.That honey goes to skye's blue as a fuel. Longest distance what I have seen is 4,5 km, when the whole yard's 10 hives foraged that field.

If you put hives in different places, you see the difference between pastures.

There are big differencies between hives too and reasons are many. But a miserable hive may get a huge yield from good pastures.
And your hives are not only one there, propably.

 

[richardbees]

Two wild flowers that are encouraged are Phacelia and Clover because they are Nitrogen fixers and leave the soil in good condition for future use - both are top honeybee forage plants.

I believe the French mainly use their EU subsidy to support agrobusiness dairy farming - but that might just be propaganda put out by UKIP

 

[Finman]

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Nowadays we have much land as protection zones of rivers. But they have been cow pastures and land has very few bee plants. They is almost hay.

The plant must have a positive imago too that farmers do nopt destroy those plants. Raspberry is good one. There are agressive and non agressive raspberries varieties. Fireweed is good too. All hate thistles.

Centaurea jacea grows well in poor hay lands.

Centaurea phrygia is good too. It is big but rare. I will plant them to protection zones.

 

[Into the lions den]

I believe the French mainly use their EU subsidy to support agrobusiness dairy farming - but that might just be propaganda put out by UKIP

One of the aims of EU policy for rural areas was to maintain the rural way of life.

You could argue that the French have done this more faithfully than the British, where we were obsessed with efficiency, grubbed out the hedges to make huge easy management fields, grouped farms together until sometimes you had 3000 acres run by a tiny handful of people, or even contractors, from a single base and the other farmsteads left derelict (now redeveloped into housing). The rest slung on the dole, and the support payments going to ever larger outfits with ever less need of it.

Now the prices of commodities are high all the beetle bank and rural stewardship schemes are being grubbed out double quick, without penalty.

As for set aside........as it was put to me in Brussels..'How can we justify continuing set aside when the products of the farms are in shortage and prices at record highs?' It a dead duck.

 

[oliver90owner]

I am surprised that ITLD would not have a largre number of 'two queen hives' if the system were so good.

 

[Finman]

I am surprised that ITLD would not have a largre number of 'two queen hives' if the system were so good.

yes, that!. During my 50 y I have not met them in production meaning.

 

[Nic Rhodes]

I am surprised that ITLD would not have a largre number of 'two queen hives' if the system were so good.

I thought ITLD did do something with dual Queens, or at least small colonies ontop of larger ones. ITLD?

 

[Finman]

.
The question is: why to keep two queens when you may bye queens which lay 2 metre high hive tower full of bees.

If you have douple brood system, it is not easy to get queen which lay in two boxes.

Beekeeping is not equipment moving that you have excluder here or there, or you have one box or two boxes.

YOu may take the whole excluder off and what then? Your hive or your yield will perhaps be any better.

But if you want to try 2 queen system, you do it. It is not difficult to put 2 queens into one hive.

Often guys have had here 10 hives on backyard. When they have dropped 5 hives off, they have got the same total yield from hives and per hive yield is douple. And why? Because nectar on pastures is the same.


80 years ago it was in the book that maximum amount of hives is 10.
It is said still so even if hives are now 3 times bigger and plants in environment have nothing to do with 1930 y vegetation on grounds.

If you feel so, you do it and see what happens.

.

 

[peterbees]

I use Ron Brown's two queen method for raising nucs and I like it.
You can raise nucs without needing to move them to another apiary.
If a colony is preparing to swarm I move about 5 combs of brood and stores without bees into a new brood box above the Brown Board, with the top entrance closed; let the nurse bees come up through the Q.Ex in the B'Board for a day to cover the five combs, then close the Q.Ex and let the bees fly from the new top entrance in the B'Board. I feed the bees in the top box, using a frame feeder, which also acts as a dummy board. Note: Bees cannot now travel from the top box down to the parent colony.
When the Q'cells in the top brood box have hatched and mated and is laying, I either sell the nuc or use if for increase. OK, they are perpetuating the swarming impulse, but nucs raised this way do well later on the heather, and the method suits me.