Using virgin Queens

[beehugheshoney]

If you were going to graft from them to mate the daughters with your local drones anyway, have you thought about just asking to switch your order to virgins? You could probably get three times as many virgins for the money that you have already paid and they would have those on hand all the time. Then you wouldn't have to wait for the mother queens to start laying and graft and so on. Just a thought.

[Lauri]

That is a great idea. Problem is with their overload of late orders I would not think of trying to change mine. There is no contact anyway. Great idea for another year though!

[beehugheshoney]

The virgins will make solid drones for you other grafts. There are so many grafts emerging every day that they don't have places for them because they over graft to be safe. They just throw them away. So the virgins won't slow up other orders anyway. I don't think they are as far behind as it seems here. If you count up the people complaining, its probably a few hundred queens and less than twenty people. They produce thousands of queens a week. You want me to get them to contact you about it? I have a few cell phone numbers that I'm not suppose to have. Ha ha ha!

[Lauri]

Hee hee, nice to laugh.
My order was for Three sunkist cordovans, two buckfast and two russian/italian.

$$ equivelent of virgins would be fine. They can forget about the russians though. Just sunkist and Buckfasts please.

Lauri Miller
jloutdoors@aol.com
253-843-1319

[beehugheshoney]

Alrighty. Be back in 10.

[beehugheshoney]

Done! It's good to have friends with bugs sometimes. Ha! The British lady, Victoria should be getting up with you soon. She was all alone answering emails and calls while they were all with Johnny's wife and baby. She even said that she had no idea why, but the emails and calls were more than ever so she's just getting further and further behind and its like every one of them were checking status of orders that aren't even due yet. Ha ha ha! I think the stir here has just caused a worry that caused communications to get further behind which was causing more of a stir, and it became a vicious cycle. She said she could get you a case of whatever you want in virgins. They were going to toss hundreds that emerged yesterday. They should be just what you needed.

[Lauri]

Wow, Thanks!
(Now I feel guilty since they are so busy and so many have not gotten their orders)
But thank you for taking the time to help.
I'll have to go whip out some more mating nucs then. You just never know what tomorrow will bring do you?

Lauri

[beehugheshoney]

Sure thing. Let me know how it works out!

[Lauri]

She emailed me right away and is sending a full box of virgin sunkist cordovans with a few buckfast. If I get a good mating return I will have a few to share will a few local people in my area who also are overdue for their orders. Got to share the wealth you know.
You are a good guy, Hugh Thanks so much for your help.
Lauri

[Jaseemtp]

I wish I had those kind of contacts.

[beemandan]

She emailed me right away and is sending a full box of virgin sunkist cordovans with a few buckfast.

You probably already know this but introducing virgins into a hive or nuc has its challenges. My success rate has been abysmal.
Best of luck.

[Ramona]

We make the hive queenless, even for only 20 minutes, smoke the hive fairly heavily and set the virgin in the space between two frames and watch her walk down.

If for whatever reason we can't make the hive queenless, we smoke the hive heavily and put the virgin as far away from the suspected frame where the mated queen may be hanging out then release the virgin.

We raise and release virgins into nucs and hives that have (or have recently had) queens and have very good acceptance rates.

I don't pinch the mated queens but split them off so they can keep making brood while the virgins are getting mated and setting up house.

Virgins are very cheap relative to mated queens - if one fails, it's not that expensive to try again.

Lauri, I think you're running over 50 colonies so if one or two fail, not such a big deal time wise.

We raise all our own queens from our survivor stock - it's great to have a supply as you need them and see the shift as the bees become more and more acclimatized to their environment.

Judging from all the agricultural stuff you are already doing, you will LOVE raising your own!

Ramona

[Riskybizz]

Ramona

I have several queenless 5 frame nucs that have been queenless now for almost 2 weeks. I don't see any worker layers to date. So you would smoke them heavily and run her down between the frames and expect her chances of survial to be pretty good? What about rolling her in honey, or introducing her in a large push in cage over emerging brood. I'm purchasing a few virgins and not raising my own at this time.

[camero7]

You probably already know this but introducing virgins into a hive or nuc has its challenges. My success rate has been abysmal.
Best of luck.

I have 20 coming this week. I'm going to try ammonium nitrate in the smoker to help acceptance. There are several beekeepers who use that method with great success.

[BeeCurious]

I'm going to be sharing a dozen or so of Adam Finkelstein's VP Spartan virgins with a friend of mine.

[beemandan]

I'm going to try ammonium nitrate in the smoker to help acceptance.

Let me know how that works out.

[camero7]

Will do, queens should be here tomorrow and I should know in a couple of weeks if they took, mated and are laying. A friend of mine just installed 20 with the "old" method and it will be a decent comparison of the methods.

[Lauri]

I'll post a report in a day or two. Those 20 virgin queens will be here today and I have been scrambling to prepare for their unexpected delivery.(They were supposed to be mated, but due to circumstances I took virgins instead)
Yesterday I Made 15 more baby mating nucs out of some scrap 3/4" laminated plywood.
Today I brushed 3 deep box's of bees into a deep full of half frames to make them a queenles shook swarm and give the older bees and drones time to fly back to the original hive locations and old queens.
I'll have to place a small baggie feeder with syrup in the nucs, as I don't have candy to feed. I'll take two mini frames and the bees that are clinging to it and place them in the baby mating nuc, then install the queen in her shipping cage for a day. She is about 3 days old already and will have to be released as soon as she is accepted..I'll poke a hole in the candy for a fast release. I'll try a direct release or two first and watch closley. I'll let you know how it works out!
I'll give the inside and the top of the frames a little spray with Prohealth/water for a strong smell that will hopefully help mask the queens scent until they have become use to her. Using my disk excluders I will confine them until tomorrow evening.
That's the plan anyway! My weather here is horrable, raining like crazy and cool. But Friday and the weekend are going to be in the upper 70's. just about perfect timing for mating flights I'd say. I'm crossing my fingers I will get it right!

[snl]

If the weather is warm (days & nites) I've introduced virgin queens on just emerging brood (no bees at all) and have a great success rate..........

[Brandy]

OK, so what am I missing here?? Why aren't they mating those virgins vs. eliminating them either with the pinch throw out method, or shipping method??