Moving from ok queens . . . to great queens.

[rrussell6870]

Amdro granules, not broadcasted, but poured directly into a few holes in the nest that you make with a stick... after you have treated each nest, get some grasses growing... the added moisture in the soil caused by the shading of grasses will make them seek a more suitable home...

For your stands, place each leg in a pail of water... keep an eye on the water level to keep it from evaporating...

We don't really have a problem with ants, even though there are plenty around and some even build nests under hives and even between hives that are on pallets... a good healthy hive will teach the ants that its easier to find a safe meal elsewhere...

On the timing of queen rearing question... Been going at it since early Feb...

Hope this helps.

[robherc]

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And now, watch me dissapear... *POOF!*

**steps back into the shadows & stops hogging the thread for a while**

[rrussell6870]

Lol. For the grass, you may want to try mixing a pound of ball clover per acre into some rye seed or that buckwheat seed... its pretty drought tolerant, but adding some form of irrigation will help all around... Texas is home to Fairly Seed Co. who grows Ball Clover and has great success with it there... clover is a nitrogen fixing plant that I have been doing a good bit of research on and have used a LOT throughout my life... it starts well in poor quality soil so long as it has water and it corrects a lot of problems and only releases the N when the plant dies... it reseeds itself heavily and provides an excellent protein forage for cattle and other livestock as well as wildstock like deer and turkeys... if you use a rotation program, it can give you forage for livestock year round... and forage for bees year round as long as the droughts don't get the blooms...

We did a study in pecan orchards where constant herbicides had been used beneath the trees for over a decade and the soil had become a total wasteland... ball and crimson clover were used in separate rows and both made a moderate stand the first year and a full stand the second... for pecans, clover is an excellent cover because it harbors the predators of pecan pests, controls the amount of N released into the soil and helps hold in cool moisture so the soil doesn't bake in the summer... pecan crops nearly doubled by the second year and the amount of pesticides needed were less than a quarter of what was needed before...

The point is that cover can resolve some of the "hard soil" issues that fire ants seem to thrive in, and it sure is a lot safer than importing phorid flies. ;-)

[rrussell6870]

Ok, back to better queens... seems like most everyone is seeing what the spring is like with Sunkist hives... so now you just have to figure out what to do with all these darn bees right? Start stocking mating nucs and trying your hand at grafting... use the bees, they don't mind at all... lol.

Here is a pic of what a split looks like ten days after busting up a three deep eight frame Sunkist hive...
http://i1040.photobucket.com/albums/...s/IMAG0884.jpg

That's two new hives and the one original... and still way more bees than necessary for stocking a few nucs and making a good honey crop... I hope you all have a great season and look forward to seeing some great pics of bees and the queens that you raise!

[fieldbee]

Hi Joseph
What are the temperature high and lows where you are, through the winter? (Dont think I could do that in my part of the world, but are curious - it would be a help if I could)
Secondly I am guessing you have drones right through or are you deliberately raising drones as well?

I've been rearing a few queens continuously all through Autumn and Winter. We've been having a nice wildflower flow, which was starting to fade away, but last night it began to rain and is continuing today -- hopefully that will keep the wildflowers going.

I recently restocked my queen cell builder, then started a batch of thirty cells, however, only about ten of them took, so I added even more nurse bees and feed, then regrafted the vacant cups.

[RayMarler]

Yes Joseph Clemens, I remember your posting.
I've noticed in past years that the second round always seemed to come out better. I seem to remember reading somewhere about setting up the cell builders before hand with a frame of eggs/larva that were removed as the grafts put in, but can't remember where. Then I read your posting and so started doing it this way this year. I've liked the results so far. Thank you!

G. M. Doolittle in Scientific Queen Rearing is where I first heard of this method. He claimed that for queenless cell builders, this method of leaving them larva to feed three days before introducing grafts would produce cells every bit as good as natural swarm cells. I myself came up with 4 days, it just sounded like a good time as cells are one day from being capped over.