Mom and Daughter queens together

[wayacoyote]

A package that I started around April 15 has capped brood and eggs in it. However, the hive is superceeduring the queen. (I hear that this is getting to be common with purchased queens... thoughts and comments?)
In fact, on frame has an uncapped queen cell (a HUGE ONE) and a capped queen cell (another HUGE one) and eggs all together. What is the possibility of the hive allowing one daughter to remain with the mother (that 2-queen sincerio) if the hive is only on 6 frames? I pulled this frame and another one to "rescue" the capped queen.

Waya.

[Michael Bush]

>However, the hive is superceeduring the queen. (I hear that this is getting to be common with purchased queens... thoughts and comments?)

That's what I'm hearing also.

>What is the possibility of the hive allowing one daughter to remain with the mother (that 2-queen sincerio)

Not unheard of but not the typical scenario.

> if the hive is only on 6 frames?

Less likely.

[tecumseh]

wayacoyote sezs:
A package that I started around April 15 has capped brood and eggs in it. However, the hive is superceeduring the queen. (I hear that this is getting to be common with purchased queens... thoughts and comments?)

tecumseh replies:
my best guess is that this has 'always' been much more common than most might believe. since most queen breeders (now and in the past) catch queens after they have begun to lay a very limited amount, the possibilities of acquiring a gueen that is poorly mated is significant. I also suspect the honeybees interaction with the mite has increased this tendency for purchased and raised queens.

[D. Murrell]

Hi Guys,

Pesticides inside the hive have the greatest impact on rearing queens. Check out the latest research on the impact of comaphous on queens in the bee mags.

The effects of fluvalinate on drone fertility has also been well documented.

It's almost impossible to get a good queen from a pesticide treated hive, especially if the combs are old and contaiminated with pesticides. I've attempted to contract rear queens for some beekeepers whose equipment was so contaminated, that it was impossible to get any grafting acceptance. As I recall, it was less than a dozen runty cells out of a batch of 640. Out of the dozen, only one queen mated and was accepted. The remaining few were misses.

Had another commercial beek wanting the same service. I was assured that hives hadn't been treated with comaphous. When I noticed a dozen empty cases of checkmite in the shop, I turned down the job. I no longer rear queens for others for this reason.

Regards
Dennis

[ May 23, 2006, 01:09 PM: Message edited by: B Wrangler ]

[Dave W]

In pre-varroa literature, we were ALWAYS advised to expect queen supersedure and to treat for nosema. Could it be that an "all natural / no chemical" approach could be responsible for our modern-day problems too?

[ May 23, 2006, 01:03 PM: Message edited by: Dave W ]

[D. Murrell]

Hi Guys,

Extensive studies about queen longevity were conducted in Canada before the mites arrived. It was published in the October 1993 ABJ. It's an interesting read.

Tracking about 400 hives, 88% of the queens lived 8 months. 64% lived 22 months. 25% lived 34 months. 2% lived 46 months. 0.5% lived 58 months.

It was a different story with package bees. Only 45% of the queens survived 5 months. Supercedure has always been alot higher with commercial queens/package bees than most beekeepers think.

Before I started raising my own queens in chemical free hives, the commercial queens shipped to me would last at most 1 1/2 seasons. My own queens will last three full seasons.

Regards
Dennis

[wayacoyote]

On this new issue longevity, Walt Wright's book on Nectar Management led me to wonder something that you're discussing. He mentions that hives that are successfully detered from swarming by Nectar Management technique will then redirect to superceduring. This has led me to wonder:

The hive hopes to swarm each year whereby the queen mother would leave and the hive would rear a new queen.

Failure to swarm causes Walt's hives to supercedure each year (as I understand him to say) whereby the hive rears a new queen.

I see a trend here... You?
Waya

[BerkeyDavid]

Waya and all

I have been reading the same thing into Walt Wright's articles.

Each year the hive has a need to reproduce itself by swarming. ONce you fool it into not swarming, it then assumes the queen has failed and supercedes the queen.

I am wondering if this is consistent with what others have seen. It certainly doesn't seem totally inconsistent with the statistics.

[Michael Bush]

I have the same marked queens in my hives now that I had two years ago. They obviously haven't swarmed and they obviously haven't superceded. Walt's methods of swarm control are different than mine and (by all accounts) produce more honey than mine. smile.gif

[FordGuy]

In pre-varroa literature, we were ALWAYS advised to expect queen supersedure and to treat for nosema. Could it be that an "all natural / no chemical" approach could be responsible for our modern-day problems too?


or could it be:
their are many more beekeepers on the internet in this (wonderful) forum talking about it;

what they are seeing is natural reproduction, not overcrowding swarms, not supercedure of faulty queens.

It could be that we are in a multi year cycle and we are at a point on the curve where colonies reproduce at greater rates.

could be a combinationof these, or other factors, including chemicals, and maybe other factors we haveyet to discover.

[Walts-son-in-law]

Printing for Walt.

[Alienor]

I think we think too much in wrong terms.
In general case the old queen goes with the swarm and the hive gets a new one.
But - the old queen will build up the new hive.
This is success.
If the colony survives winter they will swarm in next spring.
And the old queen goes with the swarm.....
I guess in the wild the queen will swarm every year until she gets lost on that way or her spermatheka is empty.
Than she will be supercedured but not earlier.
Am I right?

If a queen can live 4 or 5 years or more why should Mother Nature let her kill after being successful with her swarm?
That won't be very effective in terms of evolution.
It would be interesting to let a marked queen swarm and look how many swarms and years she can survive.....

IMHO there is no sense in requeening every year. To simulate a swarm with a large split (only the bees, not the comb!) with the old queen might be better if they get a chance to build up fresh and un-contaminated comb.

What do you think about this?

edit: there is no sense in requeening every year AND crushing the old queen.

[ June 24, 2006, 02:36 PM: Message edited by: Alienor ]

[Alienor]

I'm very interested in your opinions ;)

[JohnK and Sheri]

Alienor
I am speaking from the perspective of a commercial beekeeper, we do this for a living. It is our only income. I realize the hobbyists/sideliners have more leeway within their operations and they might want to leave nature more to her own devises.
Yes, a successful colony will swarm, they think they are rich, so they multiply. They raise many cells, most of which don't make it. They might send out several swarms, some colonies would make it, some wouldn't. Instead of a powerhouse hive that would make an abundance of honey, and bring premium pollination fees, they would all be small, some would make it through the next winter, some wouldn't. 1 large hive makes more honey than 2 seperate smaller hives, even though total bees might be the same. All this 'survival of the fittest' is nature's way, but is detrimental to my income, lol.
We as commercial beekeepers are trying to profit from the fine line of what the bees want to do and what we want them to do; it isn't always the same thing. They want to swarm, most beekeepers don't want them to. They want to keep their honey, we take it away from them.
But do we want a colony that is successful, and big enough to swarm, but doesn't? YES YES YES!

It WOULD be interesting to know how long a queen could go, how many swarms she would generate.
You go first. smile.gif
Sheri

[Alienor]

:D Hi, Sheri,
this was a theoretical question.

I'm also a commercial (small) beek but last weeks I cought some swarms like every year from my neighbours and I'm always fascinated from the power of a swarm.

Here is Germany the pre-swarm is most times only about 3# but they have a performance in comb building and brood - incredible.
And this with the old queen.....

Of course I do not think about to let my commercial hives swarm , I'm doing CB!

But my main thought was about the queens.
If they indeed can build up a complete hive from scratch every year after another for 3 or 4 times than eventually do we waste a ressource if re-queening every year?

With CB they all get supercedured but for next year I'm planning to "save" some after repro c/o date and put them in a package on empty frames.
If they do well they are next spring much more worth than the package would bring if sold in summer. In spring everybody is hiding for bees but in summer it's difficult to sell them.
Demand and supply....

(Sorry, it's difficult to explain what I mean).
I know they will not perform like a real swarm because the swarm event is missing but I want to try it with small number.
Bees are not only my profession but also my hobby. Very addictive... ;)
And just now I'm thinking about how to give a package/split the experience of being swarmed without having been a real swarm before.
I'm hiding for the power button/internal operation which makes a swarm performing that good.
If you can make a split or a package building and harvesting so quick as a swarm which is in a hurry to get everything done before winter you will earn a lot of more money ;)
Here over wintered bees are paid very good but splits or packages in summer aren't really worth the work so I'm looking out for other ways :cool:
Packages and splits just not developing this way like a swarm and need feeding. So not the swarms...
And Germany is importing every spring about 20000 packages from NZ.
I will be feel honored to supply some german beeks with some very good colonies/packages ;)

edit: to make more money is a big cause for investigating tj´his thing but for real I'm just curious about swarming and want to KNOW what's going on in this process. Call me nuts but I have a desire to understand my bees....

[ July 05, 2006, 03:35 PM: Message edited by: Alienor ]

[JohnK and Sheri]

Hi Alienor
I understand what you are saying as to the value of bees in the spring as apposed to later in the season. Until quite recently it was very similar here in northern USA also. I knew many beekeepers that actually got rid of as much as half of their colonies in the fall so they would not have to feed them over winter, then went somewhere warmer than our northern climes and in spring built up to their original numbers for honey production from the saved half of the operation, or ordered packages from somewhere warm and built these up for honey production. In this way they requeened half of their operation every year. A few started fresh with packages every spring, kept them through honey harvest them killed every single bee. Besides not seeming very "nice" to me, it also seemed such a waste, but surprisingly, economically it made sense.
The shortage of bees for the almond pollination in California changed all that; now many beeks are making as many new hives as possible as late in the summer as possible in order to benefit from this demand.
I am of a like mind that it is a waste to requeen and kill the queens, so I am liking the fact that we are making use of every queen we can find, while still trying to maintain our honey producing capabilities.
We used to winter most of our operation in Wisconsin ouside and expiremented with wintering ones too small to make it outside through winter in special ventilated rooms indoors. Maybe this would be an option for your old queen splits. They used much less feed over winter kept indoors during the harshest part of the winter and built up faster than spring boughten packages. I've heard of this being done in Germany, have you ever wintered bees indoors?
I am curious as to the legal issues in Europe concerning the moving about of colonies of bees. Is is common or done at all to move an operation between countries for purposes of pollination, honey production etc?
You mention importing bees from NZ, is this New Zealand? Seems a long way to import bees, is it a silly question to ask why no imports from Spain or Italy?
I totally understand your curiousity about your bees. And it is surely a good thing. Our industry has always benefitted from beekeepers that were curious about bees, why and how they do what they do. If it wasn't for this desire to understand I suspect humans would still be scraping the honey out of beetrees.

Sheri

[Michael Bush]

>I'm hiding for the power button/internal operation which makes a swarm performing that good.

I'm guessing that the process of swarming gets them all prepped and focused. I've noticed anytime the bees are focused they accomplish a lot. Sometimes bees have a hard time making up their collective mind. During a swarm their collective mind is made up.