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Is there any scientific evidence that grafted queens are inferior?

18K views 51 replies 23 participants last post by  Solomon Parker 
#1 ·
I went to a talk by Gunther Hauk in Charlottesville VA recently and was a bit surprised by some of the blanket statements that he made about modern beekeeping. One that really caught me off guard was that grafted queens are inferior and have lead to many of the problems that bees are facing. I have played around with lots of different styles of queen rearing from moving swarm cells, MDA splitter method, Alley Method, Miller method, Smith method, walk away splits, and grafting and not noticed any difference in the quality of the queens as long as the cell raising hive was strong and well fed. I prefer grafting overall. So I am perplexed how grafting could be so bad if done in the correct conditions. I can't say that I buy his explanation.

Here is a quote from his blog:
"In case of the honeybees: they have a weakened immune system due to all the poisons in nature, the reduced diversity of food supply and, of course, all the nasty things we have invented to get more honey. The most serious impact on the colony's health is the way queens are bred commercially from worker larvae. In Rudolf Steiner's bee lectures it becomes clear that the queen is closely connected to the sun-forces due to her short gestation time (16 days). The workers have fallen out of that sun-influence to some degree; the drones are fully earthly beings (hey, they are males!). By breeding queens from worker larvae over 100 years, we have reduced this pure 'sun-being' to have more and more earthly qualities. The manipulated queen has a lowered (spiritual) light-emittence which negatively influences the health and vitality of the entire colony. Therefore these parasitic forces of darkness have better access to the bees. Varroa mites, tracheal mites, small African hive beetle, and now flies!? "
----- Gunther Hauk
http://spikenardhoneybeesanctuary.blogspot.com/

What do you all think?
 
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#42 ·
Daniel,
I don't see how that can be so. Wouldn't you expect to see bees w/ thheir heads in brood cells all the time? I know I am not as observant as others, but I have never seen what I thought was a bee feeding, putting food in a cell occupied by an egg or larvae.
 
#43 ·
Mark, I cannot recall where I read the 1500. But regardless of the number. If bees are not placing the jelly in the cell. Where is it coming from? Does it require a bee place their head into the cell in order to feed a larva? The undisturbed brood I have seen is usually covered in bees to the point you cannot see brood at all.
 
#45 ·
Of course bees put the food into the cell so the larvae can eat it. But 1500 times a day? Not that nit picking frequency is all that important. I too see bees covering brood, just ahven't seen the feeding being done. Not saying it isn't done. I'd just like to see it happen.
 
#44 · (Edited)
There are a lot of myths around queen rearing and as a couple of people have pointed out, that Steiner stuff (anthroposcopy) is quasi religious esoteric stuff and in my view has no place in beekeeping.
Steiner wrote about bees and sun cycles but I don't think he was actually ever a bee keeper himself.

I do a lot of grafting and I agree with almost every point Michael Bush has made on this thread.
If there is dried up royal jelly at the base of a cell from which a queen has emerged, she was not short of food in the crucial 4 and a bit days days before the cell was capped over.

Re. queens getting superseded, there is research to show that a queen introduced to a colony just a few days after she has started to lay is quite likely to be superseded.
Ideally, a queen should be laying for about a month before being introduced.
I think the problem with early introduction and subsequent supersedure is something to do with lack of queen pheromone.

Some people also believe that queens which mate from mini nucs or Apideas are inferior in some way but I have not found this to be the case either.

Rubbish in, rubbish out applies and if you start with bad genetics don't expect to produce good queens.
Same applies to your local drone population.
The other critical factor with open mated queens is the weather.
In an ideal world you would get several good flying days 8-12 days after the queen has emerged.
Last season our weather was so bad at times virgin queens were unable to fly for up to 3 weeks.
 
#46 ·
I've made two separate observations:

1. If you put a larvae on a microscope slide and watch it, it simply eats the pool of food around it.

2. It does not seem (if one watches a frame of brood in an observation hive) that the bees are adding food to the cell once a minute.

When you see them with their heads in a cell with brood, they are there for several seconds at least.

Have you ever taken a frame of brood out during an inspection and watched it for at least a minute? It does not appear (at least to me) that the brood is being "fed" (or that food is being added to the cell) once every minute. Ditto for an observation hive where the bees are not being disturbed.

I know what numbers are cited (I don't recall at the moment...we may have even put a similar number in our book)....but it's always useful to doubt accepted facts, especially if you do some math and some observation and it doesn't jibe.

I have an idea of how to run some more detailed observations (and record them) this spring, and I hope that I don't get too overwhelmed with other things so that I can do this.

deknow
 
#47 ·
The worms can only eat so fast. I don't see where 1500 visits a day needs to happen. One visit per day to drop off RJ for the worm would be enough, if a days supply was given at that time huh? I have no idea how many times the worm is visited myself, It may be once, it may be 1500 times, it may be more or less. Is it important to know?
 
#48 · (Edited)
I do believe that this thread has brought up particulars concerning the feeding of queen larva, not larva in general. If you've ever raised a bar of queen cells, and observed them at almost any time before they were sealed, it is easy to see where nurse bees would be adding food to the cell at least 1500 times per day. Every time I pull a bar of open cells to view their progress, many of them have nurse bees in them, with only the tips of their abdomen showing. I can't see what they're doing in there, but I usually assume they're in there adding more royal jelly to the pool.

I've manipulated conditions, and had the bees produce some very large cells, with large reserves of royal jelly. When I move cells to emerge into California mini cages, if it hasn't already been done by the bees, I gently remove some of the wax from the tips of the cells, exposing the cocoon. In doing this, I have observed that, despite how large the outer beeswax shell of the queen cell is, the space the queen cocoon occupies generally is only so big, and no bigger. Though cells can be underdeveloped and very small. thus affording the queen even less space for her cocoon, than she may utilize in a more spacious wax shell . I also consider, especially in my region, which quite regularly has very low relative humidity and high temperatures; that a reserve of royal jelly may have other, beneficial effects on developing queens, than its nutritional value.
 
#50 ·
The issue of frequency of feeding is about disruption of that frequency during grafting. You will have to decide for yourself if that matters. I know it is common to read that larva handled to long die. But I am sure that right up to the point of death. they where not being harmed at all.
 
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