High Queen loss

**gregstahlman** · 07-28-2011, 03:26 PM

we have hardly lost any hives since we moved back from Texas. texas was more windy than usual this spring but i didn't seem to affect the matings as far as we can tell. we set 72 hives in all our yards in SD and the hives are pretty even. all the yards in our outfit are maybe missing 1-3 hives in each yard. haven't really had any costomers complain about the queens that were purchased from us and we are located in TX. i would have to say it is directly related to how the queens were produced, not the location where they came from. of course fugicides never help much either. lol

**SCFarms** · 07-28-2011, 10:34 PM

I have not noticed anything out of the ordinary and I have purchased about 1000 CF koehnen queens aswell. mostly what I have been hearing from other beekeepers around me is the guys who used the new formic quick strips are seeing high queen losses

**mnbeekeeper** · 07-29-2011, 11:07 AM

so your saying the queen loss is happening now due to the use of the quick strip earlier in the season or what. we used the maqs in may and our hives are fine now. sure there was a loss here or there but no large amount of queen loss. i think the weather is the big factor. to much rain.

**SCFarms** · 07-29-2011, 12:56 PM

The reports I have heard said they saw 25 to 40% queen loss directly fallowing the maqs application. The only high % queen losses that i had heard about were from the guys who used the quick stripes. few guys that I talked to recently treated just a few weeks ago and are having problems now and others who treated in may or june have already fixed their hives

**MichaBees** · 07-29-2011, 02:36 PM

I bought 110 some queens from different suppliers this year (from the good, the bad and the ugly suppliers)
64 are still alive; 20% DOA, some died on the cage prior to release, some were replaced by the bees a few days after arrival.
I think I will raise my own next year, and maybe will add some fresh genes once in a while; this could be a better way for me.
Not a commercial beekeeper here, but just wanted to share my experience this year.

Aurelio (leo) Paez
DBA Micha Honey and Bees.

**alpha6** · 07-30-2011, 09:01 AM

I don't use MAQS in my hives and the bad queens we got from Koehen were last year...so bad I didn't order from them this year. Hopefully they fixed their problem. I know that Dr. Marla Spivak was out to their operation to help them figure out the problems. My issue with them isn't that they didn't get the problem fixed and are now producing good queens, but that they lied that there ever was a problem. I just don't like doing business like that. Glad yours worked out for you and before last year I was always happy with Koehnen.

Originally Posted by SCFarms

I have not noticed anything out of the ordinary and I have purchased about 1000 CF koehnen queens aswell. mostly what I have been hearing from other beekeepers around me is the guys who used the new formic quick strips are seeing high queen losses

**acbz** · 07-31-2011, 05:56 AM

Originally Posted by Bill Russell

Something else that gets my attention is the lack of brood in the queenrights. Sealed brood and some eggs. very little larvae. I've seen this when bees exposed to fungicides but what's thisabout.

Hi Bill, I saw a lot of that too when I was checking our hives. I assumed these hives had swarmed (had heavy swarming this year as you know) and caught a queen who had just begun laying. I also noticed a lot that had sealed brood and no eggs but didn't act queenless...some of those did have eggs a week later. others not.

Re Beeslaves comment on higher queen loss in the yards surrounded by the "green deserts" aka corn fields- We are all suspecting the neonics since there's a lot more corn around these days and this queen failure has been a pattern the last few years. But is there any possibility that lower quality and less diverse pollen sources (corn deserts) can also cause this disappearing queen thing? I've never heard about this causing queen problems, and it doesn't seem likely since periods of pollen dearths don't cause this to happen. But still..something is going on and one wonders if it's a contributing factor?

**HVH** · 08-27-2011, 09:39 PM

alpha6 -
My bees were from Koehnen last spring and I would have lost about every hive if I didn't add cells in the late spring. Of those colonies where the cells didn't emerge or the virgin didn't make it back to the hive each became laying worker colonies without supersedure. Without an early build up my new queens had a lot of catching up to do which means no honey for me this year. I've learned my lesson. I don't plan on relying on a commercial source for queens other than some stock to graft from. If it means staying in a motel in California to start some early queen rearing - so be it.