Beesource Beekeeping Forums banner

Do chemicals in beeswax affect queens,drones?

4K views 9 replies 9 participants last post by  odfrank 
#1 ·
At a Cal State research lunchon a few years back, the program was about chemical residue in wax and it's effects on queens and drones. The research showed that chem residue caused queens to supersede and drones to shoot blanks. Some folks in the audience were refuting much of the data. It was suggested that queen producers ( lots of them in the audience ), should have their combs tested. Supersedure is a major problem now. Is there a link? I know for a fact that getting 100 bad queens sure ruins your day.
 
#5 ·
Marla Spivak gave a very interesting review of the work of one of her grad students at the AHPA conv in Fresno this year, looking at larval development in coumaphos & fluvalinate contaminated comb. The larva take longer and irregular amounts of time to mature, creating those weak, scattered brood patterns we've been seeing. Looks just like a failing queen.
 
#6 ·
chemicals or varroa



I would think, varroa on the drone larva would have more of an effect in putting the maturing drone in a weaken state.A sickly weakened drone would not be up to par in my opinion.We think that a queen wouldn't mate with one like that,but over time, maybe our drones are becoming weaker, and our queens don't have much choice. This along with chemicals in the comb, no wonder were having supercedure queens.Just my opinion. Jack
 
#7 ·
Queen weight

It was reported in the ABJ that there was a direct correlation of the emerged queens weight to the wax contamination %.
I use to us the wide based cell cup. But, I changed over to the plastic cell cups.
Queen breeders are puting the pierco drone based frames into their drone mothers to prevent sterilr drones. I know of a queen breeder that puts out over 500 of the Pierco drone frames annualy for high quaility drones.
I will have my drone frames in place soon for this season.
Regards,
Ernie
 
#8 ·
jjgbee said" Some folks in the audience were refuting much of the data. It was suggested that queen producers ( lots of them in the audience ), should have their combs tested. Supersedure is a major problem now. Is there a link?"

kinda makes you wonder why some folks even attend the meetings if they have no respect for researchers and scientific data.


The Effects of Miticides on the Reproductive Physiology of Honey Bee
(Apis mellifera L.) Queens and Drones
Lisa Marie Burley

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-08162007-092313/unrestricted/lmburley.pdf

I have no doubt in my mine that supercedure problems from purchased mated queens are correlated with fluvalinate and compaphous contamination.

Ray Olivarez has a good understanding of the issues and his queens are highly regarded as being good layers by several big operations. Unfortunately his genetics have not been selected for any real mite resistance.
 
#9 ·
It would only make sense that chemicals would impact drones and queens. If you contaminate the living environment of any living creature you're going to see some negative side effects. Now it is possible that it is difficult to establish a scientific causal link - unless you spend considerable sums of money to research and explain just how this happens. The tobacco companies used this logic to fly in the face of common sense, saying in the 50's through the 70's that there was no scientific proof that smoking caused lung cancer. Technically, they were right at the time, but now science has shown what common sense knew for decades - smoking is a direct cause of lung cancer.

So obviously - chemicals in the comb can have an serious impact on drones, queens and workers.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top