what to do with old queens?

[djuniorfan8]

I confess, I'm in love with my queen!! There has gotta be a better use for her in her later years then squishing her. Could i put her in a NUC for brood production to help boost my other hives. It just seems like a waste, she could have a few more years in her. I know she may not be able to keep a whole hive, but maybe a NUC. Also, does anyone use NUC's to help with drawing out frames?
- Tim

[Terri]

Brother Adams used the best of his elderly queens in a nuc to raise replacement queens.

Or, you could set them in a separate hive and let them swarm. If they survive the mites they will fly off and found new wild colonies.

[Michael Bush]

>I confess, I'm in love with my queen!! There has gotta be a better use for her in her later years then squishing her.

If she's laying well, why get rid of her?

>Could i put her in a NUC for brood production to help boost my other hives. It just seems like a waste, she could have a few more years in her.

Exactly.

>I know she may not be able to keep a whole hive, but maybe a NUC. Also, does anyone use NUC's to help with drawing out frames?

It has been done. I haven't, but then I have lots of nucs around raising queens. I tend to set a few extra queens aside in nucs just for emergencies. It's nice to have some "parts" to work with when a hive is in trouble.

Here's a quote from "Better Queens" by Jay Smith. Pg 18 paragraph headed "Queen Alice".

"In Indiana we had a queen we named Alice which lived to the ripe old age of eight years and two months and id excellent work in her seventh year. There can be no doubt about the authenticity of this statement. We sold her to John Chapel of Oakland City, Indiana, and she was the only queen in his yard with wings clipped. This however is a rare exception. At that time I was experimenting with artificial combs with wooden cells in which the queen laid"

If you're using Apistan or Checkmite then I would not expect a queen to live nearly as long.

When I do get rid of the queens, I drop them in a jar of alcohol to make swarm lure. I don't squish them. I always have a hair clip queen catcher in my pocket, so if I wasn't expecting to need to dispose of a queen I can catch her and put her in the alcohol when I get back to the house.

[Antero]

djuniorfan8

I always keep 3 or 4 nucs with extra queens all year ,just in case a queen goes missing from a colony.(IMHO one can never have enough queens)


Terry