Hygenic queens and queen failure?

[mrpush]

Hi,

I have 5 hives, 4 of which were Hygenic bred queens. Of those 4, 3 failed to sucessfully raise a new laying queen for the hive, they all generated several to many queen cells.

The 5th hive was a ferral colony, and they did not miss a beat after swarm and generated a new laying queen.

So a 75% failure rate for the hygenic queens. No unusual conditions in the area.

Could this be the result of the genetics of these queens?

Anybody see similar results with "bred" queens?

Thanks,

MP

[apis maximus]

Hi,

I have 5 hives, 4 of which were Hygenic bred queens. Of those 4, 3 failed to sucessfully raise a new laying queen for the hive, they all generated several to many queen cells.

Could this be the result of the genetics of these queens?

Anybody see similar results with "bred" queens?

MP

So, they have "generated many queen cells"...Are you saying that the 3 that "failed"...have initially swarmed? If they have started queen cells...and if there are many...they might have swarmed. Do you still see queen cells when you inspect the hive? Are they fully capped or are they open? If they did swarm, the new queen(s) that have emerged, or will emerge will have to get mated. It takes a bit of time before you will see eggs again. So it might not mean the genetics of your bred queens are at fault.

[Keth Comollo]

Not sure what you mean by failing to make a new queen. If I have a good queen I just want her to lay eggs, get the hive real strong, get a honey harvest and overwinter well. If that happens she hasn't failed at anything. The idea is not to encourage supercedure or swarming but if you see signs of it you need to think about making splits.

[jmgi]

I bought some nucs with VSH queens this spring to try out in my operation for the first time, and am not impressed. They all had great solid corner to corner brood patterns when I installed them into the full 10 frame boxes, but evidently that wasn't good enough because 75% of them tried to supercede their queens within a month or so, I say "tried to supercede" because most of them failed and ended up queenless, a couple had laying workers, and only 1 or 2 managed to get a new mated queen on their own and have built up very slowly since then. I'm not discounting the possibility that the queens didn't get mated properly from the start and petered out quickly, but I think it is a remote possibility considering the high percentage that failed. I think that when these VSH bees were developed they focused on mite resistance but screwed up other characteristics, yes, its a trade off, but not one that I will experiment with again. I'll stick to breeding my own survivor stock, which has been going much better the last few years. Would like to hear others experiences with VSH, pro's and con's. John

[Lauri]

I bought a few inseminated VSH queens for breeders last year. I had some interesting experiences with them.
First of all, I am just guessing here. I am sure there is a lot of info about VSH I have not read yet.
The VSH trait seems to be very strong. Most of the breeder queens, especially the pure VSH never did much as a hive. They continually were uncapping the brood and just would not grow. I never saw many if any mites in the hive, and treated them anyway..but still not a lot of growth.
But I didn't get them for to make a strong hive. In fact I was warned to keep the colony small because of the fact they are frequently superceded. It's the next few generations of daughter queens where I think they will shine.

My take on them is VSH is a recessive trait . If the first generation of daughters are mated to drones without any VSH, all the daughters workers will NOT exhibit the VSH trate. They will only carry it. The drones DOMINANT non vsh will mask that behavior.

It is when you have daughter queens AND local VSH drones and you get queens mated with both VSH and non that you will get say 25%-50% or 75% of the resulting workers that will be homozygous recessive VSH. A PERCENTAGE of VSH workers in the hive will control the mites quite well, The workers with the dominant Non VSH will allow them to grow and let the hive increase.

I know you had failier with supercedure in your hives. This does address a slightly different "problem" Not really a Problem since they are doing exactly what they are supposed to do. But if you don't understant it some may think they are duds.
Is it related to your experience? Not sure. Sometimes we make our conclusions about what happened in the hive and have to remember we may be missing something. it is important to try to keep an open mind when solving problems or 'Mysteries'. Figuring out Exactly what went on is certainly important in avoiding the issues repeatedly.
Just my thoughts..I'm no expert.

[mrpush]

Hi yes my hives swarmed. Lots of open (flare) cells......2 ended up w laying workers or sterile queen.....(drone popcorn city no normal brood) one completely queenless w zero brood. Interestingly the one w zero brood has already 11 queen cells started from a frame of eggs added in just days. The popcorn hives seem to have stared a queen cell after a shake out. Basically 3 of 4 did not successfully get new queens after swarming. They are the hygienic. Ones.

[jmgi]

If you are running hives for honey production, bees that are prone to excessive swarming or supercedure are not in your best interest, period. Maybe VSH bees do a good job on the mites, but with the queen problems I experienced I will not be back for more. John

[honeyshack]

It is quite possible that the hives were requeen after removing the old queen 24 hours earlier. In some cases the bees have started emergency queen cells within that 24 hour period, resulting in them hatchin out and killing the installed queen. A sign of this can be many cells on the face of the frame like grapes