Will an Apidea raise their own queen?

[nonstandard]

Hi guys and gals,

The situation I have is this;

I have a carnolian colony that are the devil incarnate and are nicely strapped up tonight prior to a move in the morning to a remote apiary to allow me time to re-queen them. I could not find the queen today (clipped) but found some unsealed queen cells and also eggs and all stages of brood.

I have an apidea with a banked fertile but not very productive queen (blue), saved as a back up after re-queening another colony.

My plan is this;

In five days I will go and knock down all queen cells in the arsey colony and a couple of days later introduce the blue queen in a queen cage releasing her three days later. Hopefully this will keep them going while I source a better queen.

I don't want the carnolians to raise their own queen at the remote apiary as it's a club site specifically for members to use while re-queening arsey colonies which means that there will be a high concentration of drones with a bad genetic make up.

My question is;

Assuming I don't find any good queen cells in the meantime to introduce to the apidea is it likely that the queenless apidea will raise a queen from the eggs/larvae that are already present in there?

Any other alternative suggestions are more than welcome.

 

[susbees]

Firstly if they are making queen cells they have intentions to swarm which you need to deal with with an AS/Demaree/whatever.

Second, you can get a queen of sorts from an apidea but they are very unlikely to be as well nourished/productive as a properly reared queen.

 

[oliver90owner]

is it likely that the queenless apidea will raise a queen from the eggs/larvae that are already present in there?

As susbees. That few bees is not enough to get a good queen. Someone who has done it will be along, I daresay, but not the sort of thing to be considering. I wouldn't want one from a nuc either, unless one like mine (14 x 12 with six frames) that was well full of bees. Queen rearers don't have starter colonies, finishing colonies and then apidea for no good reason.

 

[Poly Hive]

Two things.

First is that moving them may well cause them to give up swarming, leave the cells to see for yourself but it often works.

2nd is that yes a mini nuc is quite capable of raising a queen but it is likely to be a poor one.

PH

 

[nonstandard]

Firstly if they are making queen cells they have intentions to swarm which you need to deal with with an AS/Demaree/whatever.

I have already A/S'd with a horsley board but after deciding they needed moving have changed that to a Pagden method A/S. On checking through before strapping them up it looks like they have tried to swarm and lost the clipped queen leaving behind charged but not sealed queen cells.

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk 2

 

[susbees]

First is that moving them may well cause them to give up swarming, leave the cells to see for yourself but it often works.

PH

Interesting

I did raise a mated black queen - as did our RBI - both by accident in apideas during last season. Not sure if he still has his but mine is still laying after a fashion but on the to be requeened list so not to be recommended as a deliberate ploy.

 

[nonstandard]

Two things.

First is that moving them may well cause them to give up swarming, leave the cells to see for yourself but it often works.

My problem there is that as it would appear that they are queenless they will obviously try to raise a queen from the cells, and the virgin queen will mate from the remote apiary; my bees already have a tendency to bad temper and following as do the other colonies on that site, I see the only safe course as being the introduction of a queen that has already been mated.

Once the existing bees have been replaced and hopefully the colony has calmed I intend to bring them back to my current apiary.

2nd is that yes a mini nuc is quite capable of raising a queen but it is likely to be a poor one.

OK there seems to be a consensus on this, so I will introduce the banked queen that I have on hand. Hopefully I can then harvest a queen cell from one of my good colonies as soon as they raise one, pop it in the apidea, get it mated and replace the banked queen with that one.

 

[RoofTops]

Bees in a mini-nuc will raise a queen providing they have the eggs or young larva to start with.

I did this at the end of last queen rearing season when I removed the last queens and just left the mini-hives to get on with it. Out of 3 mini-hives one produced a good queen which over-wintered well and is now building up a colony in a full sized nuc. The other 2 produced poor queens, one of which became a drone layer in March, the other expired mid-winter.

However, my experiment was with Mini-Plus hives, which are bigger than mini-nucs being equal to something like a 4 frame nuc. I have done it with mini-nucs as well but the queens produced were runts.

So - it sort of works but is not reliable.

 

[Hebeegeebee]

Someone who has done it will be along, I daresay, but not the sort of thing to be considering.

Yep, that's me. As Rooftops has done really.
Not done in an apidea or swi-bine but a slightly larger mini-nuc. (I've got a few home made ones). Considering the queen from the mini-nuc came from an emergency queencell after the queen was yanked out she was not too bad. OK to keep a colony going but that's about it.

Nonsatandard. Carni's are usually gentle so have you got the worst of both worlds. Swarminess AND bad temper?

 

[nonstandard]

Nonsatandard. Carni's are usually gentle so have you got the worst of both worlds. Swarminess AND bad temper?

Great typo Hebe.. Non-satan-dard Satan being the operative word with these bees.

They are a colony that the A/S queen failed in last year when everyone was having trouble with queens taking six weeks or more to mate and start laying. We re-queened them with a bought queen from M-More apiaries which was a Carnolian of Eastern European extraction, she has done well but her progeny have always been nervous in comparison to our other colonies which although mostly from swarms probably have a high buckfast genetic content.

They built up well this spring but started turning nasty during the prolonged poor weather and have not improved. They were following us up to the house (35yds) and mugging me there two days after inspections; I was getting concerned for the rest of the family, two young kids, a wife, two dogs and an eighty three year old Mother-in-law who lives next door but comes round a couple of times a day.

Anyway they are now on their holidays awaiting re-queening and we are now waiting for the A/S we took from them to show their true colours, hopefully the local drones will have calmer genes than the Eastern European ones that produced the current bees.

The whole thing makes me suspicious of Carnolians; however, a new beekeeper in our village has a very prolific and swarmy colony of Carnolians that I looked at for him the other week with bare hands, in fact if I'd realised at the time how bad mine were going to be I'd have saved myself a queen cell from them.