Commercial queen survival

[Oldtimer]

Jim I've heard a rumor about that. Do you have a link to a study or anything? If not, I'd like to know what is meant by viability.

[jim lyon]

Jim I've heard a rumor about that. Do you have a link to a study or anything? If not, I'd like to know what is meant by viability.

Good questions all OT. I hesitated to make that post as I wasn't able to find any links. Dr. Pettis' presentation was "Long live the Queen? drone Layers and Supercedures". Sorry I am relying on second hand information. Perhaps someone can help me out?

[Ian]

hasnt that been found of all the chem mite treatments we are or have been using

[Oldtimer]

I hesitated to make that post as I wasn't able to find any links.

And you just KNEW somebody would ask LOL!

No worries. Just, I use none of the (so called) hard chemicals, except, as a last resort, amitraz. My reason for that is it is not residual it breaks down and does not stay as a permanent residue unlike the others.

However I heard, but from an unreliable source, that it can affect queens. I would like to know if there is any truth to this, and if so is it larval, adult, drones, or what, and is it just when the strips are in, or whatever else may be useful.

Like you I've searched this but not clever enough to find anything authoritative. DeKnow perhaps?

[jim lyon]

I would guess the affects might be pretty subtle but with all the complaints about short lived queens it certainly isn't a stretch to think that there might well be a relationship.
Deano? Naaaaaa, he probably puts it on his toast.

[Oldtimer]

LOL, but he's a veritable little ferret at finding rare studies about the effects of chemicals.

[jim lyon]

Yeah, this one should be child's play for him.

[beemandan]

Many of the talks or papers I’ve read (going from memory…no citations) indicate that the issues are often the contaminant residues in beeswax. In particular, as I’m sure you guys know, fluvalinate and coumaphous. I also haven’t heard anything directly related to amitraz.
This study might be of interest though.
http://www.extension.org/pages/30844...hive-chemicals

Who knows....maybe Dean's internet search engine is in the shop for an oil change

[camero7]

While Dean is busy you might be interested in this paper:
http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cgi/vi...90&context=etd

[beemandan]

I had 150 queens ordered for a mid March delivery from a sizeable supplier I’ve used in the past. Because of his location, he is able to have mated queens weeks before I can. In late December he told me his hives were in a major collapse and he would be unable to deliver my queens.
I have to ask myself…what would cause such an operation wide collapse in a relatively large operation run by experienced people? And as is appropriate to this thread….how do the things that result in such a collapse affect the queens produced by them?

When I was about 12 I went to the eye doctor. As he handed me my prescription…he laughed and said ‘son…your next prescription is going to be a seeing eye dog’. Fifty years later and I’m not quite ready for the dog but needless to say my eyesight hasn’t improved. I say all of this to explain why I’ve never produced my own queens. I simply don’t have the eyesight to graft. I just got a Jenter and have a Mann Lake graftless box on the way and expect to break them in this spring. It’ll mean a very different strategy for my nuc production but I’ve had enough of the headaches of buying queens from commercial suppliers.
Nothing boring about keeping bees…..

[Oldtimer]

Hmm.. Thats interesting, copper napthenate screwed around with the bees memory more than anything except coumaphos.

And still some folks around my parts get their boxes treated.....

[Rader Sidetrack]

I hesitated to make that post as I wasn't able to find any links.

Here's one document that mentions this relationship:
http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/files/147887.pdf
It doesn't report hard numbers, though. Go to page 4 and read the left column, or use a "page search" feature (Control-F on many browsers) to search for "amitraz".

[beemandan]

Hmm.. Thats interesting, copper napthenate screwed around with the bees memory more than anything except coumaphos.

And what made that even more interesting...only a single interior surface had been treated! Can you imagine what it would have done if all of the wood surfaces inside the hive had been treated?
Ok...got to run...honey to deliver....bees to check...and this evening a pint at the pub with some other local beekeepers. There is something to be said for winter. In spring it is all I can do to eat and drop into bed at the day's end.

[squarepeg]

i'm seeing the other salient advantage of raising your own queens is that you get to evaluate each one's performance prior to putting her into production.

[jim lyon]

Hmm.. Thats interesting, copper napthenate screwed around with the bees memory more than anything except coumaphos.

And still some folks around my parts get their boxes treated.....

Yeah I have seen these studies as well. What would be of interest to me is a study showing reduced ovary size or some related measurable physical change in a queen exposed to Amitraz. I think that would be of great interest to anyone considering using Apivar or something off label.
Come on Dean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=angi1vwUkQc

[EastSideBuzz]

They had a tough time mating them last year due to weather in CA early on. So it depends on the weather out there also. If a queen has to wait to do a mating flight to long or not enough drones get out of their homes due to weather it can make for some wussy queens.

[JRG13]

Don't people treat hives with copper nathenate? I recall a John Pluta video of him treating all his woodware with that and Diesel fuel.

[Oldtimer]

Yes they do. Personally, I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.

(Well I would, but not my bees).

[Oldtimer]

Thanks Radar. The words used were "It appeared, though, that Api-Life VAR may be toxic to sperm in the spermatheca".

Interesting but doesn't tell you much. Wonder if there's any hard numbers.