Use of queen-less hives!!!

[jimbeekeeper]

Hi

Top tip!!! Suggested to me, was the use of a queen-less hive as a production factory.
Because the hive has no brood to look after, all stages of bee developed to be foragers, therefore maximum intake to hive.
Also because no queen to worry about swarming and losing the hive.

When production (crop) is complete, hive is united to become queen right.

Thoughts?

Jim

 

[Hivemaker.]

Where did you get this idea? Do you intend to keep adding brood,and breaking down queen cells,or just let them rapidly diminish,turn into laying workers,and queenless bee's do not work at all well,nor are they likely to draw any wax foundation.And the longer they are without a queen,the harder it will be to get them to except one,or even unite,thats if there's any left worth trying to unite.plus queenless bee's will drift,leave and join queenright hives in your apairy,thus dimishing them even faster,thats if they have no brood as you say.but they will live longer,as they don't do much. sounds bad.

 

[user 382]

Sorry Jim, don't like it. I agree with hivemaker. It goes totally against the grain and is not in the bees best interest. I had one colony last year that became queenless. I couldn't get them to raise their own queen or accept one. They stopped gathering a surplus, began to diminish and ended up full of laying workers. In the end I shook them out and let them enter nearby hives. Not good.

 

[Bcrazy]

jimbeekeeper
Jim the next time your having a laugh please put the devil or something to show its a spoof.

Regards;

 

[ian]

Hi

Not so much a spoof as you may think. I saw details of a Russian company that sell boxes of q-less bees.

Evidently the idea is that when traveling to your holiday area the box of bees are taken with you and a crop from your holiday location can be harvested with the destruction of the bees at the end of your holiday.

To get over the problems of laying workers and the bees breaking up as a unit, a strip of queen pheromone is included in the box.

Bees without brood to feed will gather a larger crop in proportion to the norm.

I think the article may have been in the apiculture research journal years ago.


Regards Ian

 

[Finman]

.
I have done that much. I take a queen away for main yield. Hive has no brood to be nursed and they really make more honey. Hive makes at first emercengy queen cells and get a new queen. Than you change it to selected lying queen.

There is no problem of laying worker.

But problem is that when hive has no brood, they do not collect pollen for late brooding. Hives will be smaller for winter.
Another problem is that some hives loose their will to forage and are long uppset about queenless situation.

 

[Bcrazy]

Hi Finman,
Something does not ring correct here.

Take the Q away and within 6hrs the colony will know its QL.
Once this happens the colony will build emergency Q cells to replace the Q.
The time factor here is extremely short for the bees to collect more nectar, normally when a colony is QL it becomes less active.
You mentioned that bees collect more honey. How can that bee as you then say as soon as emergency Q cells are built you place in a laying Q?

But problem is that when hive has no brood,

when this happens the bees become lethargic and next to nothing is foraged for.

Regards;

Jim if its not a spoof my appologies.

 

[Finman]

Hi Finman,
Something does not ring correct here.

Take the Q away and within 6hrs the colony will know its QL.
Once this happens the colony will build emergency Q cells to replace the Q..

Normal system. It is like swarmed hive.

The time factor here is extremely short for the bees to collect more nectar, normally when a colony is QL it becomes less active.

Time is 2 weeks

How can that bee as you then say as soon as emergency Q cells are built you place in a laying Q?

I have not sayed that

I keep hive queenless 2 weeks. When a new virgn has emerged, it is easy to change to better queen.

when this happens the bees become lethargic and next to nothing is foraged for.

Not at all so. They are restless a while but when they have queen cells, their life is normal again. Queen cells in the hive is normal state in the hive.

 

[Finman]

when this happens the bees become lethargic and next to nothing is foraged .

Some hives become lethargic and it takes along time to get them work normally. But they are only one or two.

 

[Poly Hive]

3-5-8-21. Then emergence. 21 days as house bee, 21 +/- foraging. 6 weeks.

How long will a Q- colony remain productive? About 0 days. How long will it say as a unit, less than 6 weeks by some margin as with out the Q pheromone to keep it cohesive bees will drift off demoralised.

As a honey producing system is is utterly and simply a non starter.

Colonies in my experience show distress at the loss of their Q within minutes.

PH

 

[Finman]

3-
Colonies in my experience show distress at the loss of their Q within minutes.

PH

My 40 years experience is that queenless colony gather 100 kg honey yield in july when main season is at its best - if the pastures are good.

In light foraging conditions the relative advantage is better when larvae are not eating the basic mass of honey.

In our conditions, when I make the hive queenless at the beginning of June, the brood which are missing, woud emerge in the period when our yield season is over. Those bees have no advantage because they will die and we have no yield season after 10.8.


So the bees which have layed and raised in the first half of June, have no foraging job and they will die before winter. They are vain gang.

At the end of June to middle of August bees must raise wintering bees.

The hive cannot be too long without brood because it will have a lack of nursing bees in some stage. 3 weeks is too long to be without brood if you want a good cluster for winter.

 

[Finman]

.
I have same effect when I join two weak or medium hives to one large hive.
So it will have 2 hive's foragers but one hives brood to be nursed.

Another queen is missing in system.

*******************************

When you look the swarm how quickly it get honey at the beginning. The reason is that tahey have not brood to be nursed and they got most of foragers from their parent hive.

When we go to the momemt 3 weeks later:

- 50% of foragers are died
- new home bees have not emerged.
- Hive is full of honey and brood and they cannot keep warm any more space.

--> we see that the hive is out of balance for long time.

.
The situation is posible to correct when you join two hives where they get into balance the home bees and foragers.
Normally that happens when you join the parent hive and the swarm for main yield.

.

 

[jimbeekeeper]

Hi Guys

Yet again What emotive responses to a simple question! This ?theory? was part of a presentation by a bee farmer at my local association meeting, so don?t shoot the messenger!

To be more specific, the bee farmer ?made? his hives Queen-less ONLY for the heather crop. Utilising only the foragers for their time frame maximised the crop. I am sure there is more detail to this, but this is his long standing method.

Jim (Shot down for going against the grain!)

 

[Finman]

This “theory” was part of a presentation !)

This is not some theory. It is at least in Finland widely used trick and it has been used for long time.

Of course if the yield season is several months (south), in some stage you get lack of house bees and then soon foragers.

We have a short yield season, 1-1,5 months.

 

[Finman]

.
One trick more

If you have hevy hives and you cannot move them but you need forager power to some another field.

Take a extracted comb box and put it over the hive. Soon it will be full of bees.
Take it and join to the another apiary where you need extra kick up. No paper needed in joining. One box of bees may be +20% foragers.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Also no need for varroa treatments if the first thing you do is remove queen and all brood,brilliant advice,could be why there is so many winter losses,ccd explained,do they use this queenless,broodless system in usa. So when would be best to remove queens and brood to prevent swarming in uk,would think about second week in april,and put queens back in sept after the heather.

 

[Bcrazy]

Hi Hivemaker,
Reading your post No 16 I would like to comment on a couple of points that you have raised.

So when would be best to remove queens and brood to prevent swarming in UK,would think about second week in April,and put queens back in sept after the heather.

To remove the Q's in the second week in Apl will leave the colony QL until its demise.
Now if your considering replacing the emerging brood with frames of sealed brood for that period, then you need breeder colonies.

Also no need for varroa treatments if the first thing you do is remove queen and all brood,brilliant advice

Not so brilliant advice because by moving frames from your breeder colonies into the 'forage only' hive you are transferring varroa from one hive to another. So IMO you would need to treat for Varroa in the 'forage only' hive.

Regards;

 

[Polyanwood]

Hivemaker, I also didn't understand your reference to CCD. Were you suggesting that if the QL state was towards the end of the season, then this would of course affect the colony's ability to raise winter bees? Or something else?

 

[Hivemaker.]

No don't put any brood in,thats the whole idea is'nt it,queenless broodless bee's.

 

[Bcrazy]

Of course how silly of me not to have seen the light.

Regards;