To buy a queen or not?

[Craig W.]

I am not in the market for one but I do read several post were others buy queens on a regular basis, which I have read is a good thing to do to keep the hive strong.
But, reading Walt's materials he seems to lean toward the hive's natural way of doing things and letting the bees replace the queen, that " you can get a queen better then a store bought."
What are your opinions to this and is this what you do?

Thanks,

[wayacoyote]

Craig,
I haven't gotten down to Walt's to pick his brain on the issue directly, but I also seemed to get this message from him.

I can tell you that I've joined a number of beeks here (the list being too long and I'd leave someone out) that are quite sincere about taking advantage of local, feral genetics. I'm seeing feral bees. I live in the middle of a national forest that is too small to have not experienced the miriad of pests. My first confirmation that SHB had made it to this state was seeing it crawling on a sidewalk in the national park. But it's not so small as to not have its own population of feral bees. So there are ferals surviving out here at least.

There's a lot that is said about the various characteristics of the races of EHB, nothing of which tells me what they Should do in my area for survival. Yes, I said survival. I'm not a commercial operator, or even a side-liner, who makes money from my bees. I'm a hobbiist/ tinkerer who doesn't have that much capital to invest in regular requeening anyway. What I'm saying here is that forecasting a profit would make investing in a store-bought queen tempting.

Let me cut this down by saying, I think there will be a growing grassroots demand for locally bred bees. I ordered 4 queens this past year and all were supercedured. I would have done just as well, or even better, raising my own.

The graftless kits are quite afordable for most of us. With a Cloake Board, or even cheaper Michael Bush's way with a Floor Without a Floor (FWOF), one doesn't need all the starter & finisher hives. I understand that some the first generation supercedure queen from some store-bought mixes don't do so well. (It's like raising an apple tree from the seeds of a store-bought apple.) But with some focused effort and selection by the beekeeper for proper qualities, I'm wondering, "outside of emergencies or bringing in some fresh genetics, why Would I purchase queens reared and bred in a climate, region, and agricultural zone different from my own?"

I expect Pcolar (Joe W.) will chime in. He has some documents on queen selection that he uses as well as a group in Yahoo groups called the Feral Bee Project.

Great question! And timely too.
I'll close by saying that I restricted my projection of the future movement of queen demand from saying "this next century" because we are poor, very poor at remembering lessons learned. We'll learn the need for locally produced queens, but once we start reaping the rewards, we'll go back to the old way... such is the way of man.
Waya

[beegee]

"A better queen" would be the question. It depends on what you're tryiung to accomplish. If you have productive, gentle bees it may be best to let the bes build their own queens. In some cases, youmay nned a queen more quickly than one is avaialable, hence a mail-order solution is handy. If you want to accomplish something specific, like getting a more hygienic strain of bee, buying queens streamlines that process. Rearing one's own queens swaps time for money, and unless you have the time and inclination towards structured routine and record-keeping queen-rearing can be daunting. Letting the bees build their own queens is the natural way to go, but you need to be aware of what they're doing: when and why.

[pembroke]

I was talking to older beekeeper this morning and talking queens. He said to order queens from Calif. and to ship here,central KY, would be about 37.00 to 40.00 dollars. This is a little steep for the hobbiest I think. ??? Pembroke

[Michael Bush]

IMO I want local survivors that are acclimatized to my area, and able to survive on their own. So local bees are what I want. I raise local survivors.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesqueens.htm

If I were you. I would raise local bees as well.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesqueenrearing.htm

[Craig W.]

That's a good idea. what month is a good time to start raising your own queens? I have only 1 hive for now.
Thanks,

[ScadsOBees]

I don't know what the weather in texas is like, but usually the spring is the best time, when the hives are booming and in expansion mode. Any other time in the summer to early fall works fine too, as long as there are still plenty of drones flying.

As far as shipped versus local queens: I don't deal much with AHB yet, and when shipping from the south there is always that possibility. One of the queens I got turned the hive somewhat unpleasant, so I'm trying to create a queen from a different hive (havent' had a time to get in there to check if she's laying yet b/c of weather). If they are all local bred then I wouldn't worry so much about AHB (I know, they still could be somewhat AHB if bred locally).

[Craig W.]

If i were to start rearing my own queens for splits and ferals, i would do this in a nuc? and how could i go about insuring myself plenty of good drones? Can I start a drone nuc?

Thanks,

[tecumseh]

craig w ask:
what month is a good time to start raising your own queens? I have only 1 hive for now.

tecumseh replies:
I have reared and successfully mated (weather and drones being the essential ingredient) queens from mid march thru october. Last winter was very mild so I even had one hive requeen itself in december.

spring time is the easiest time to rear queens, or perhaps I should say anytime their is a flow to encourage the hive's expansion. for this location late march is the earliest that I can produce that year's first queen. I typically begin feeding in January to pave the way for this process.

[Michael Bush]

Here, I'd start rearing queens about the first week of May. I'd stop about a week ago.

[danno1800]

I got three dark survivor queens from Michael Bush and they are all doing well. I raise my own queens, but wanted some new survivor genes in the drone pool. Thanks, Michael!