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Over Wintered vs Spring Raised

10K views 21 replies 16 participants last post by  RiodeLobo 
#1 ·
When buying Queens, which would you rather have, a Queen that was produced in Sept. and made it thru the winter or a Queen that was produced in March?
 
#4 ·
I think I'd go for a sept queen that was over wintered in nucs and sold in spring rather then march queens. The queen breeder would have more of an oppertunity to evaluate the queen, the drones will of been more plentiful for matings, and any duds will of shown up through winter. Actually, I'm planning to do something the same for my operation where i'l be raising queens late summer to overwinter in nucs to use in splitting the hives in the spring then uniting them to gether before the main honey flow and keeping the young queen to requeen. this will be the first year i'll be trying this.
 
#7 ·
It is not that over wintered queens are any better than spring queens. They just have a big head start on any spring queen because they start building up end of Jan or start of Feb in this area and get a few cycles of brood ahead of spring queens. But if you are over wintering in a Nuc box the risk of them starting to rear brood early and starving goes up or not having a big enough cluster to move to the honey in colder temps. That is what I have run into when trying to make late splits. That is why I have started to make as many as I can by the end of July then build them up on goldenrod and feed if needed.
 
#8 ·
Brother Adams was a big advocate of over-wintered nucs - poor queens are already selected against because they didn't make it through winter. The queens raised during the optimal swarm months with tons of food and lots of flying drones get well fed and mated. If I remember the number correctly about 30% of package queens get superseded within the first 30 days. Larry Conners has also indicated that optimal queen production would allow the queens to lay for a few weeks before mailing off to customers. If you purchase queens then you are doing their job by over-wintering and selecting against queens before placing in a production colony.
I thought Brother Adam's approach of swapping last years production queens with over-wintered nuc queens during the spring, and then replacing the production queens, now in the nucs, with newly raised queens during the peak of the rearing season as quite elegant. The older production queens keep the nucs going until they can be replaced with young queens.
 
#11 ·
Good thread. I just checked my overwintered nucs last night. Wow! Never thought I could get single mediums through the winter, but all three made it and they are exploding! Only had 2 deadouts out of 20 this year, barely enough honey from the deadouts to throw on the nucs. These nucs are stronger than many of the overwintered full hives. I think it may have something to do with the fact that they have a smaller space to maintain. Kind of like living in a mansion by yourself, v. an apartment. Easier to take care of the apartment.

I was wondering what anyone thinks about choosing a breeder queen. I am thinking about doing some grafts from one of the nucs that built up the best. Even though no honey production yet they overwintered so well...
 
#12 ·
I have always said that it takes bees to make honey. So if you have a queen that lays well up until the flow the hive has to make honey if there is a flow. It makes sense to me that this queen would be a good choice to breed from.

Breed from the best requeen the rest

David
 
#14 ·
I've been trying to get started raising some queens during March, but the weather hasn't co-operated. Now March is gone and it looks like I have a window of opportunity in the next few days. I'm a couple of hundred miles north of the commercial guys, but cold hasn't been the problem so much as rainy/cloudy/windy. This first batch is just a shakedown cruise for me, but I don't see how you could expect with much confidence to get well raised and well mated queens much earlier than this (April 1st) in my area.

On the other hand my queens from late last summer are producing brood like machines - hives are brimming over and swarming is almost sure to be an issue soon.
 
#16 ·
Keep in mind I'm in California and we are the almond state.
I just got 3 5-frame nucs from Randy Oliver on Tuesday.
I also got 3 4-pound packages from Tinocobees on Friday,
and released the queens Saturday.

The nucs from Randy are last years queens as I requested this way, the same with the packages from Tinocobees, last years queens as per my request. These are proven queens that performed for almond production, versus the first of the year early queens, I'll take the proven queens every time. Queens so early are not mated in the best of the year, the flows are just getting started and the weather is very iffy especially depending on the year, and drones need be started 2 weeks before starting the queens.

So when purchasing first in the year I prefer last years queens. However, I'm finding queens started in July and laying by August first or mid August are very good over winter, from my limited experience when paying attention over the last few years.
 
#17 ·
The Bay Area is a mild climate with forage essentially year-round, so your results may vary.

That being said, I overwintered my first mating nucs in a medium queen castle. Three 3-medium frame mating nucs made it through January successfully and I started increasing space in early February. These three hives are now in double deeps and are probably filling about a deep-and-a-half.

Nucs are starting to be available now and these overwintered mating nucs are at least three times bigger than a typical spring nuc and from my point of view are a much better way to get a new hive up and running early in the season.

-fafrd
 
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