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Curious on Commerical Queen Rearing Yard Rotation

42K views 80 replies 18 participants last post by  KevinR 
#1 ·
I was curious how the big boys/girls do it.

Do they have multiple mating yards or colored mating nucs, that they rotate through.

I.e. Every Friday they graft X cells for Red Yard or Red Nucs, which is moved/captures per queen rearing schedule.

Does each yard have a dedicated starter(s)/finisher(s), that are used every 21+ days?

Or do they have one constantly restocked starter(s)/finisher(s) that is used for all yards/colored nucs?

I'm trying to decide how I want to try my hand this year. I can see the perk of 20 queens a week vs 60 queens every 3 weeks. The load per week would be less, and the chance of bad weather ruining a entire batch would be minimized.

Any information would be great. I grafted/mated around 100 queens last season. I'm getting my ducks in a row to do significantly more, but I'd like to learn from professionals.

Thanks,
-Kevin
 
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#2 · (Edited)
Good question. Trying to organize the mating nucs was difficult, because although your first batch of virgins go in all at the same time. you get some nucs that were unsuccessful in a mated return or your remove some mated queens and not others Then they start getting on different schedules. I used different colored duct tape with notes written on them, just stuck on the outside of the nucs. Yellow for queenless with the date the queen was removed from the nuc. Gray for new virgins installed +the date, green for mated/laying and ready to be sold. Of course all marked with the breeder queens name. I could see at a glance the status of the mating nuc and none ever got overlooked. I'm pretty sure there is a better way. But it worked for me.

I used this queen rearing calender.
http://www.thebeeyard.org/cgi-bin/queencalendar.pl?month=1&day=1&year=2012

Every batch of queens got this calender printed up with the removal date of the queen cells highlighted. The calenders were all placed on a clip board with their detailed notes.
Cell removal dates were also written on my larger calender and highlighted so I never forgot.
It worked like a charm. I also made notes about the mating success of that batch, weather details if they were extreme, anything I might want to know down the road. The queens I kept still have their hatch dates on the hives and parentage-so I can evaluate them next year and refer to my notes for any insight.
 
#3 ·
I did something similar to that last year. I used bricks with colored sides/letters. I'd rotate the brick on the hive based on my findings. Originally, I had used colored push pins and different locations, but I kept knocking them off.

:D

At the moment, I'm attempting to work out my schedule for the coming season. I "might" just plan on restocking the failed nucs, rather than get them off track. Not sure at this point, hoping that some of the local experts chime it.

I'd like to get a better grasp. I.e. if I run 80 mating nucs, graft 40 cells, stock 20 a nucs week, then pull queen in 4 weeks. In "theory", I could run a 4 yard/nuc rotation. Of course, I'm probably missing something. :s

Now, I just have to figured out how to get Lauri to mail me 80 of her designer nucs for testing purposes. :banana:

**Side Note** I'm not worried about pulling the queen as soon as I see the first egg. I'd rather that she get an extra couple days of laying for evaluation, if it keeps my schedule on track.
 
#4 ·
Thinking something like this..... (Assuming that I'm using a starter/finisher)

Thoughts? (Ignore the dates, they are for demo purposes)

Is there an assumed average time for locating and capturing queen? Obviously this would depend on type of hive and skill of person, but I'd like to get a rough idea.

Thanks,

Fri Mar 1, 2013
Graft Cells - Blue
Fri Mar 8, 2013
Graft Cells - Red
Sun Mar 10, 2013
Move Cells - Blue
Fri Mar 15, 2013
Graft Cells - Yellow
Sun Mar 17, 2013
Move Cells - Red
Fri Mar 22, 2013
Graft Cells - Green
Sun Mar 24, 2013
Move Cells - Yellow
Fri Mar 29, 2013
Graft Cells - Blue
Sun Mar 31, 2013
Move Cells - Green
Fri Apr 5, 2013
Graft Cells - Red
Sun Apr 7, 2013
Capture Queen - Blue
Move Cells - Blue
Fri Apr 12, 2013
Graft Cells - Yellow
Sun Apr 14, 2013
Capture Queen - Red
Move Cells - Red
Fri Apr 19, 2013
Graft Cells - Green
Sun Apr 21, 2013
Capture Queen - Yellow
Move Cells - Yellow
Fri Apr 26, 2013
Graft Cells - Blue
Sun Apr 28, 2013
Capture Queen - Green
Move Cells - Green
Fri May 3, 2013
Graft Cells - Red
Sun May 5, 2013
Capture Queen - Blue
Move Cells - Blue
 
#6 ·
Kevin,

From an efficiency standpoint, your schedule looks pretty good. Most commercial operations work in groups. Cells are constantly being produced, often in excess. If a batch fails or falls short, there is another group right behind it to fill in the gaps. Nucs are often worked in blocks as you describe. Set up yard and then come back to catch queens 18 or so days later, depending on the size of you nucs and weather conditions for mating. The nucs in a block are all worked together, meaning queens are caught, and cells replaced that day or the next. Any nucs with virgins or misses are restocked and ready to go again.

You may alter the system any way you like to suite you needs.

Joe
 
#7 ·
I start my cell building in early May, and continue well into July, with the last queens ready in early August. We catch queens every 4 days through the season.

I'm using a schedule designed by Webster, and published in the ABJ a number of years ago. It's an 8 day schedule, with one cell building chore completed each day. After 8 days, the cycle is repeated. It uses Brother Adam's cell building method.

Basic schedule:

Day 1 Set up cell builder
2 Check cell builder for wild queen cells
3 Grafting day
4 Catch queens
5 Cells ready
6 Comb in breeder hive
7 -
8 Re-unite cell builder

Parts of the schedule are running all the time. You set up the CB on day 1, but don't check it for 9 days...which would be day 2 in the second week of schedule. And so on.

On week 1, day 1 you set up the cell builder by adding a body of queenless brood and bees above an excluder...to a strong colony. No more work until day 6, when you add grafting comb to breeder.
Week 2, day 1, set up another CB
day 2, check entire cell builder for cells...swarm below EX, emergency above.
day 3, grafting day
4, nothing...no queens ready yet
5, nothing, no cells ready yet
6, comb in CB
7 -----
8, Re-unite queen with cell builder

Week 3, Day 1, set up a cell builder...the schedule repeats every 8 days.

The first cells are ready 10 days after first graft. The first queens are ready 16 days after first cells are ready. The cell builder can be set up again the day the cells are removed.

I run 2 schedules at once, 4 days apart. This double schedule meshes well, and gives me queens every 4 days.

I run 500+ mating nucs...4 comb minis in 4 ways. They are divided into 4 groups. Each group is made up of 4 circles of 8-4 way mating nucs, 32 mn in each circle, or 128 in each group. We catch the queens from each group every 16 days, or one group every 4 days.

The cell builders take 20 days from set-up to ripe cells, and the afternoon of cell harvest, the CB can be setup again.

Bro Adam harvest the brood and bees from production colonies in out yards. I have a 60 nucs right in the CB yard for that.

Does this answer your question? Make sense?
 
#9 ·
Unfortunately the gestation of a virgin queen dosent coincide with the calendar that our society uses. Large queen operations have had to find creative ways of making this work and still allowing their workers to at least take Sundays off.
 
#10 ·
Fortunately, or unforutnately... I don't have to worry about letting anyone off. I just need to make sure that my queen rearing activities fall on Fri, Sat, or Sun with light work possible during the week after hours.

Michael,

Can you post the link to your mating nucs? I thought I remembered you running 2-way half frames with a sliding division feeder.
 
#11 · (Edited)
I tried to make my ripe queen cells coincide with the weekend so folks who wanted them could pick them up on their days off. I had No cell sales however. I was surprised, but people were scared to death to try them. They were quite cheap and would be a great way for someone to make a good queen stock or increases. I think I advertised them at $10.00 each with a successful hatch guarantee or free one time replacement.
 
#12 ·
Michael, Can you list just one schedule for beginning to end from day 1 to day 20 without including any activities from overlapping schedules? It seems tome that you have described multiple schedules but most activities are not linked to what schedule.

I think I can sort it our to abut day 6 but still am not sure just what day you graft. after that it becomes utter confusion.
 
#16 ·
This year I was running one mating yard with all the mating nucs having colored push pins that corresponded to which week and which breeder queen was used. It worked out really well having 3 rounds of queens going at the same time. 21 days after cells get planted I harvest the queens with color "X" push pins. If I didn't have them all sold I would mark those nucs to be the first to be pulled on the next week. This year I plan to do things a little different just to be easier managed, spread out the queens for higher drone to queen saturation and better genetic diversity. I will have 3 mating yards with each having 40 to 60 mating nucs and each yard will be one batch of queens. So week one I plant cells in yard A, week two plant cells in Yard B, week 3 plant cells in yard C, week 4 harvest mated queens in yard A and replant cells, and so forth. The three mating yards are in the middle of a larger circle of all my apiaries.
 
#18 · (Edited)
I like to use the wide base plastic q cell cups
BLUE for vsh
GREEN for Russian
YELLOW for SunKist
I will leave these under the lid after hatch this way i know what race they are

100 Nuc's in yard= 80% turn out
That leaves 20 that need recelled
Time you learn they didn't turn out and recell,they are out of timing. Then only 20% of the 20 don't turn out that leaves another 4 out of time for catching.
Then when you catch laying queens out of the first 80% and recell then they don't all turn out you got 16 more nuc out of timing.you can see how quickly things get hard to keep in time.

This is why i like single units you move these to another queen yard these that are out of timing on catching or recelling and recell them at the same time.

There is another way you could work this.
If weather is good most will be laying in 11 to 12 days from placing in ripe queen cells.
Check and recell one's that didn't turn out. Then give these time to mate and lay a few days
Then catch your laying queens but then you will risk the chance of them wanting to swarm because the first 80% are getting strong.
 
#19 ·
I've got too many mating nucs to catch, to re-cell every problem mating nuc that way Velbert. I would be running around with my head off just trying to keep up. I give the mating nucs their cells, and 16 days later catch what mated queens they have. If they don't have a laying queen, it could be the virgin never returned. Sometimes it's the bees have rejected my cell and raised their own. Sometimes the cell died and the virgin never emerged. I correct the problem...destroy emergency cells and/or virgins, and re-cell at that point. If they haven't any emerging brood left, they get a frame from a strong nuc. If they have laying workers, they get a frame of emerging and a ripe cell.

There's always another batch of queens to catch in 4 days, and too much cell building work for me and apiary work for my help to mess around with problem mating nucs.
 
#20 ·
Velbert, When I ready your 20% my first reaction was that is an exaggeration. So I went to the only source of actual numbers I have for now. or at least know where it is.
The following comes from a per on comparison of Instrumentally Inseminated queens to Naturally Mated queens. Arguably it applies due to the following statement.
"Most studies report similar rates among IIQ's (Instrumentally Inseminated Queens) and NMQ"s (Naturally Mated Queens) So the percentages will reasonably apply regardless if they are reporting rates for II OR NM.
1. 1480 total queens mated 1972,73 25.2% and 16.5% failure respectively average 21% This does clearly show that bad years can be very bad as well. A 25% plus failure rate means you have to graft nearly twice as many queens as you want to produce. I will show that in a bit. OUCH!
2. From 1972 to 1983 3440 queens mated 10% failure. a longer time span give a better average loss rate but conceals yearly highs and lows.
3. In 1989 a study reported 15% average failure for a 5 year period.


Related factor. one study showed a 5% failure in queens mated 10 days after emergence. but a 20% failure of queens mated at 13 days after emergence. this alone could account in drastic differences in failure rates.

I included that last line just to show that other factors need to be considered. but overall if your operation is running 20% losses it is what it is. I am just looking to see if such high rates are common.

In the 3 reports above there are 18 years total with an average combined failure rate of 12.59%

Although this protracted average does not support 20% losses. clearly the individual year numbers say that even your 20% claim could be low. Don't you just love numbers? They can pretty much just flat lie to you and you can't argue with them.

What this does tell me is that if you are having higher than 15% losses consistently your time may be better spent not chasing around empty nucs and re queening. but taking a long hard look at how you are getting your queens mated. There very well may be just a detail here or their that can make a big difference. Like trying to make sure your queens are mated at as close to 10 days after emergence as possible. In reading the entire paper temperature and room the queen is kept at after mating also makes a big difference. So High failure rates may better be addressed by looking at the condition of the nuc rather than the queen. I don't consider the above includes losses to queens not returning during open mating. So 20% losses up to actual mating and returning does seem to be very realistic. 20% unsatisfactory layers is also likely but may be preventable.

That is a total of 36% losses, at 50% losses you would have to graft 2 to 1 the number of queens you want to end up with. Clearly there is a lot of room to improve breeding methods.
 
#21 · (Edited)
I prefer to think of it in terms of acceptance rate. Yes, 80 to 85% is pretty much the norm in my experience, anthing below 70% is pretty demoralizing but happens on occassion, 90%+ is "rarified air", nice when it happens but not something you can count on. That hasn't changed too much through the years. More noteworthy, though, is that I have found when you get those lower numbers it is a sign of poor mating conditions that will later manifest itself in the coming months in a higher attrition rate among those queens that you do catch. In other words the simple presence of eggs in a nuc 2 weeks after cell insertion does not necessarily a great queen make. I agree with Mike. You really do need to treat your nucs with uniformity, any nuc that hasn't "caught" in the same timeframe as the majority needs to be rebuilt and recelled on the same schedule as all it's neighbors.
 
#22 ·
Hi Daniel Y do you raise very many queens i am just very small operation had about 400 mating nuc's last year.

The 80% i talked about was a combination of things
#1 I don't candle light queen cells so some don't turn out
#2 the bees don't except some
#3 find q after hatch looks good
Then when they should be laying no queen in nuc some time i have noticed less bees in nuc think they swarmed and i find a few in the trees usally 20 to 30 feet high.

I have found it best to graft every 2 days if weather permits.

About 10 to 15% of the 20% is cells not being excepted some not hatching and Nucs swarming.

Then the other 5% who knows
Birds or insects catch them they get lost on mating flight.

But you still will need to re-cell about a 20% of them or i do but not allways.

I am also finding if you re-cell with a second cell i will add a frame of small larva so the bees will feed them and use up there royaljelly hoping to keep down laying workers and bees leaving,when the second q cell hatches some brood in the nuc. Will keep them from leaving.
 
#26 ·
Hi Daniel Y do you raise very many queens i am just very small operation had about 400 mating nuc's last year.
Daniel Y's apiary is a little bit smaller than Velbert's "very small operation with 400 nuc's". :D

I think I may have lost my top bar. No surprise there that colony was, A new word to me, A dink. In person I use far more colorful phrases to describe it. I didn't find out until to late what I should have done with it. Which was pinch the queen and use the bees to boost my two nucs.
 
#27 ·
Velbert I have produced a grand total of 12 queens or so to date. I am just doing homework on breeding queens in the interest of having a full queen breeding operation in a bit over 4 years. I have been pouring over a lot of research papers the last few days. Your post caught my interest in just the numbers of losses so I sort of gave it a closer look.

I am mainly gathering up what others say and have measured observed collected or whatever. so take it for what it is worth. No argument from me that a windy afternoon can scew results drastically.
 
#28 ·
I'm planning on a 80% take on grafted cells and a 80% take on mated cells.

I've had 100% success and 98% failure on grafts. I've had 100% success for mated queens and had some nucs that just refuse to be ruled by her majesty.

I think that as long as you plan accordingly with finances and resources, then you should know where your profit margins are.

I'd love to have 100% take on grafts and 100% takes on mating, but I don't think it's feasible.

So if I'm running 100 mating nucs, I'll graft 120 cells. ((Probably more, because it doesn't take long)). Then I should be able to plan on getting 80 queens back in the yard.

Now the question is. What percentage of those 80 queens will be sell worthy. Some of those ladies will have been slumming on the wrong side of the tracks and just refuse to work.

Michael/Velbert/Others

What percentage of your returned queens are not up to par?

Thanks for all the great information.

-Kevin
 
#29 ·
We typically average around 80 to 85% cell acceptance and then about the same 80 to 85% "catch" on those accepted cells. Its always nice to have plenty of extra cells so that you can afford to cull the smaller ones. Sure we have years where we run better and years where we dont. Its anyones guess what happens to those 15 to 20% that miss, perhaps a bad wing or lost her way home or maybe there was nothing at all wrong with her but for some reason the bees just didnt want to accept her. I have re-celled nucs a few days later when we end up with a significant number of extra cells rather than just throw them in the garbage. While it seems like that would improve your acceptance a little I have, in fact, never noticed that it helps at all, which would indicate to me that most of the misses were queens that just dont return to their original hive after mating. I am pretty much convinced that the biggest variable in queen catch is mating weather.
Im not real sure what you mean by "returned queens" not up to par. I can only reiterate that poorer acceptance usually means poorer mating conditions and hence more of the queens that did mate likely to go bad as the season progresses.
 
#30 ·
Hi Kevin

5% of your 80% mated and laying queens could be a bit more or less

and i will use these not so good queens that i wouldn't sell,and put them in my problem nuc that the workers are starting to lay along with a frame of eggs and just hatching eggs to to get these back on track. Then when its time to pull queens from the good laying nuc i will cage these and repete the process and lots of time i have just directly introduce these with a 75% turn out (feed at this time) then these are in the Wright time frame to re-cell with the rest.
 
#31 ·
Sorry I woudl have had this done sooner but was out of town most of yesterday got a late start this morning and had to do some running around.
Thank you again michael for putting this info out there.
My revision of Michaels breeding system from day 1 to day 38 complete with a new schedule starting every 4 days.
Day 1 Schedule A Set up Cell Builder
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5 Schedule B Set up Cell Builder
Day 6 Schedule A Grafting comb in breeder
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9 Schedule C Set up Cell Builder
Day 10 Schedule A Check CB for queen cells
Schedule B Grafting comb in breeder
Day 11 Schedule A Graft
Day 12
Day 13 Schedule D Set up Cell Builder
Day 14 Schedule C Grafting comb in breeder
Schedule B Check CB for queen cells
Day 15 Schedule B Graft
Day 16 Schedule A Re-unite CB
Day 17 Schedule E Set up Cell Builder
Day 18 Schedule D Grafting comb in breeder
Schedule C Check CB for queen cells
Day 19 Schedule C Graft
Day 20 Schedule B Re-unite CB
Day 21 Schedule F Set up Cell Builder from Sch. A for second round
Schedule A Cells Ready
Day 22 Schedule E Grafting comb in breeder
Schedule D Check CB for queen cells
Day 23 Schedule D Graft
Day 24 Schedule C Re-unite CB
Day 25 Schedule G Set up Cell Builder from Sch. B for second round
Schedule B Cells Ready
Day 26 Schedule F Grafting comb in breeder
Schedule E Check CB for queen cells
Day 27 Schedule E Graft
Day 28 Schedule D Re-unite CB
Day 29 Schedule H Set up Cell Builder from Sch. C for second round
Schedule C Cells Ready
Day 30 Schedule G Grafting comb in breeder
Schedule F Check CB for queen cells
Day 31 Schedule F Graft
Day 32 Schedule E Re-unite CB
Day 33 Schedule I Set up Cell Builder from Sch. D for second round
Schedule D Cells Ready
Day 34 Schedule H Grafting comb in breeder
Schedule G Check CB for queen cells
Day 35 Schedule G Graft
Day 36 Schedule F Re-unite CB
Day 37 Schedule J Set up Cell Builder from Sch. E for second round
Schedule A Mated Queens Ready
Schedule D Cells Ready
Day 38 Cells ready to re-cell mating nucs
 
#36 · (Edited)
My revision of Michaels breeding system from day 1 to day 38 complete with a new schedule starting every 4 days.
Fun, eh? Try that for three months. :)

The best part of the schedule is that I always remember what day it is...I mean, I remember what I'm supposed to do for the day. Rain or shine.

So my days from May to August are: one/five, two/six, three/seven, four/eight...and I wake up in the morning asking what today is. Not what day of the week, but what day in the schedule. A one/five...a fun day...I harvest cells from the cell building yard, take them to the mating yard and re-cell the mating nucs, and then make up 4 more cell builders in the afternoon.

May the schedule...be un-broken...by and by lord, by and by.... :)
 
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