I've been trying to make some queens this year and while i was not expecting large numbers i am dismayed at the results. First round out of about 15 i got 3 mated. One of those i accidentally killed. grrrrr
Second round should all be laying by now in my mating nucs. all the cells hatched out the bottom and i have a big fat zero laying or visable. very dissappointed.
These were all fully capped and developed cells with plenty of royal jelly but for some reason they are not coming back mated. We have had only one day where i would call no fly day. All the other days i've had bees flying most of the day.
Anyone else having these kinds of numbers?? Even in spring when i was trying to stop swarming I split off 15 5 frame nucs each with at least one frame that had queen cells and those mostly failed as well. I have 3 different yards several miles apart all doing this.
I don't know exactly your specific situation, but i do know this.
Some sites get excellent mating, and some sites get very poor mating. IE, my best mating sites run at consistently over 90%. The worst, i'd be lucky to get 20%, so after giving those sites a fair trial I'll move out of those sites, at least for mating purposes.
Then i have at least one site that gives poor mating until very late spring, then flips around and gives very high percentages. At least for that site i know the reason, nearby is a dumping ground for usually several hundred commercial migratory hives, once they are moved in mating is excellent, presumably thanks to the huge numbers of drones nearby.
Poorly raised queen cells result also in low mating percentages. But if you feel you can rule that out there is a problem with your sites. I wish i could look at a site and somehow know by the layout of the land or whatever, if it would be a good mating site. But thus far, I have not been able to figure it out, only the bees know. I think a person just has to try different locations, and when you find a good one, use it, and ditch the constantly bad ones.
If you know of a large ( at least fifty hive ) apiary somewhere, try getting a site near that. Or better still, several sites around it, just incase the drones are all congregating one particular direction from it, so you can figure where you got the best results.
Thanks. Maybe next year i'll try taking the cells out to another yard and see the results. Problem i'm having seems to be at all yards. I have some inspections to do in the next few days so maybe an extra two weeks will get them laying. Last time i went around for that round i saw nothing. At this rate i'll be just recombining all of these nucs into hives instead of selling any of them.
Summer predation seems to be my biggest problem. It is not that they do not get mated, it is that they get eaten while trying to do so. I am setting up several fly backs this weekend to try and get as many cells as possible to put in everthing I have available as a mating nuc. If I can get a 25% return rate I will be happy and will combine the failures to make up stronger nucs.
I figured i'd have 50 percent loss to that and other reasons. I have a lot of birds around me with nests so feeding young and i'm sure need a lot of food. Just didnt figure it would be 100 percent loss. What is a fly back?
How long did you wait after they emerged. I often find it takes a week longer than we expect / plan before the new queens are laying. I used to think we could harvest them two weeks after placing cells, and on a good round I can, but more often than not its 3 weeks after placing cells before we find laying queens.
Its two weeks after they are sealed. I'm using a calendar that says they should have emerged last Friday and laying today. They are only 2 frame nucs and did not see a queen on any of them.
Which calendar are you using? I figure about 28 days from grafting day. 5 to cap, 8 to emerge, 5 to harden off, 3 to go on mating flights, and a week to start dropping eggs.
Fly back split, you leave the queen in a small hive with just one frame of capped brood at the original location and move the parent colony in the same yard. Foragers fly back to the queen and leave a hive packed with nurse bees to make new queen cells from existing eggs and larvae. Good for one shot per hive at making 10 to 20 cells. The hive with the old queen tends to draw comb super fast so the balance of the frames are usually foundation or partially drawn combs.
Actually i read it wrong. today they have as mated and laying is july 7 which is 24 days. Maybe i'm just early by a week. Should still be fine as i just started my next round so i have time before needing the nucs. Now that i have 2 frame mating nucs i think it might be a lot easier to just put a frame of bees in them with eggs and call it a day. A few of the ones i have now have done that even though i have the queen pheremone thing in there. Funny as summer is just in its peak and i'm worried about winter already. life of a beekeeper i guess....
I have had very good mating return success even though there were no ferals and no kept bees within 3 miles. I think that is due to being within a few hundred yards of a natural drone congregation area. 4 way junction of roads right along a glacial moraine hillside with a large gravel pit within shouting distance: Treed to the north and a cleared field immediately to the south. I dont think the queens have a long dangerous voyage to make.
The first round of mating is before the dragon flies come out in force. Now they are starting to get very plentiful and the do hang around the bee yard and I see them making off with bees quite regular.
WWW from Ohio had large numbers of Tanagers which constantly preyed on his bees and he blamed them for giving him very poor mating success.
I am sure local conditions can have a very large affect on mating.
Since we've been popping up in each others' threads about queens...
I retrieved 2 of my 4 nucs that I had in my mating yard. Both had laying queens recently. But, I believe they absconded when we had a few days of excessive head and humidity. They were dark colored nuc boxes and I'm guessing they overheated. Right now they have lots of bees that are too young to fly and capped brood. I'm pretty bummed.
And i thought beekeeping was hard. This queen thing takes so much more work and i have a lot more to learn to get any where near the pro's numbers. laughing at myself as i was counting chickens before they were hatched.
Open brood is used!
This is to anchor the "swarm" and help keep them from absconding, it also prolongs the time the queen can't lay in the comb, triggering them to draw new combs for the queen the lay in. Not to mention leaving the mites behind in the capped brood that is moved away, giving them almost a clean start !!!
Not giving them (much to any outher) drawn comb is also a key
You're trying to trigger post swarm behaviors, and when your get it right they draw comb and fill it madly.
like many things beekeeping, there are a lot of ways a thing can be done. It would seem a simple thing to add a box to a hive. but nadiring, supering, and supering with ladder combs all work to an extent but often have different effects on behavior, the devil is in the details
Don't forget that the timing during the day of your inspections can create problems, too. When looking for mated queens I try to do that before 9 am or after 6 pm. The last thing you want to do is have the hive open when a queen is returning from her mating flight. It probably doesn't matter as much if you are "late" in looking for signs of laying, say after 30 days. But if you are checking at the earliest possible day, it is a risk.
Thanks msl, I may have that wrong then. I have only done a few and used capped to get nurse bees quickly and open up the brood comb so she can start laying. Never thought of it as trying to trigger post swarm behavior.
Thanks everyone. As i stated earlier i was off by a week. I'll take a look next week and hopefully will show signs of success. Thank goodness i have an incubator or i'd be in trouble with this current round.
Checked the ten today for eggs. Had 2 that i saw. Saw another queen that was not laying. So better then zero.
Have a few that look like laying workers even though i have the queen pheremone in them. Also have a few that have made emergency queen cells that i will probably just leave be. Thought having the phermone in the box would stop these behaviors?
Going to let them go for another few days before pulling the queens and marking them.
These 2 frame nucs can really get messy due to extra space. all kinds of wonky comb issues.
My understanding is that it is the pheromones produced by open brood, not the queen, that inhibits development of the laying workers. Temp queen is supposed to help anchor bees in a new split. Getting ready to go outside and see what my nucs are doing, or not doing, as the case may be.
So it turned out I got 11 pending nucs to be mated.
Will see how it turns out this 2019 mid-July.
Last year I mated 4/5 just about this time.
Then mated 5/5 in late August/early September (mostly experimental - 4/5 of the late batch lost over winter).
I'm torn on the 2 frame mating boxes. I use them the last time I had a good graft* and thought I was set. The other hives robbed the heck out of them while I was at work. When I got to them it was just a few bees on a frame and lots of wreckage. This was also during our spring flow.
I probably should have put on guards. I tried and am liking the resource hive setup. In another thread a poster talked about using them for honey & nucs. I think I will probably just try that. I have a few boxes that I was going to use for swarm traps that I will convert. I have enough drawn comb in the freezer for the 2 extra combs in each box.
I enjoy these threads since it seems Kaizen, JWPalmer, myself and a few others are all learning this at the same time. It's almost like an open group chat.
Learning, I am. I have four of the two frame deep mating nucs ala Barnyard Bees. They have not been successful because of the robbing issue as well. I will need to modify the entrance to accept a screen so have not used them since two summers ago. The mini mating nucs from ML have about a 3/8" × 1/2" entrance that the bees are able to defend. So far though, I only have bees in one half of one box. Can't seem to keep the bees in the nucs. Right now I am back to using 5 frame deeps and hopefully my two queen castles which also have a very small entrance. I did just confirm that the reason my last grafting attempt failed was due to a rogue virgin. Three of the frames in the "cell starter" are loaded with eggs as of this evening. Pretty much on schedule for a cell that was started when I first made it up. Have three other nucs that failed to produce a queen cell and now are just capped brood and lots of bees. Will shake them all into one nuc and give the cell bar another shot this weekend.
I have four of the two frame deep mating nucs ala Barnyard Bees. They have not been successful because of the robbing issue as well. I will need to modify the entrance to accept a screen so have not used them since two summers ago.
For others - I can't emphasise enough the importance of anti-robbing screens, especially when working with nucs in a single-yard apiary. This is a shot of robber-scouts trying to gain access to a Klindworther nuc box I'm trialling, just half an hour after I set it up. They gave up after about two hours. Without the screen, that tiny colony would have been robbed-out by hundreds of frantic bees without mercy.
Fortunately, when I modified the box to incorporate ventilation, I also took the precaution of adding a simple wire-mesh screen - something which doesn't feature in George K's original design.
LJ
I actually am loving the 2 frame barnyard nucs. Think i used 2 or 3 sheets of 1/2 inch plywood and some scraps and made 18 of them. Instead of the bottom entrance i ordered cheap entrance discs from amazon. Painted the nuc fronts different colors and used different colors of entrance discs to better eliminate queen returning to the wrong one. I have them in my "nursery" at my home. This is a fence enclosed area 6 feet high and about 8x 20 feet. Any that look alike are separated by at least 4 boxes. No robbing yet but it seems i'm still on a flow as even the 2 frame nucs are packing away the honey. Hoping by the time a dearth comes i will have them shut down.
For some practice i grafted again. This queen was my best but i didn't have her here so couldn't. She lays incredibly. she was already built up and expanding into the 2nd box when i opened them in spring. This time i did it all on my own where before i got aggravated and had the kids do it. I filed my graft tool down so its thinner and i was actually able to slip under some doing that floating thing. We'll see how they go tomorrow. Just couldn't help myself and didn't want to end with a sorry display of grafting like i had last round.
After many iterations of boxes I found the only reason i want a bottom entrance is for an OAV wand. Now that we have the diy OAV thing and i'm using MAQ's I will have these on all my nucs. There is enough room that i can make a simple robbing screen to fit over it. I doubt just reducing the entrance with the disc would help alone. Maybe its just me but they just look so much happier crawling into a hole.
I have my mating nucs at least a 1/4 mile away from any big hives and I don't have robbing issues. In the same yard it was death to the nucs. Only had 12 to mate had 9 return.
Well, I got all my grafting stuff set up, loaded the cell bars with new cups and then went out to combine the 3 nucs that had not started cells. Good thing I double checked. Two of the three had capped queen cells in them, although not terribly large ones. First time ever to be disappointed to find queen cells in a walk away split! The one that did not make cells is lower on stores and has fewer bees than all the other nucs. Scratch that plan.
As of yesterday's checking - I am 5/5 so far.
9 more nucs are pending.
Next weekend will go and check (though maybe too early).
One comment - I have documentation (Iliazov, 2015, pp 88-93) where they actually tested different sizes of the mating nucs by colony size (300g, 600g, 900g of bees) and concluded:
- the weakest mating nucs had the worst mating #s - 300g of bees (using little frames - 1/4 Dadant frames).
- the strongest mating nucs had the best mating #s - 900g of bees (using 1/2 Dadant frames and full Dadant frames - frame size did not really matter as they found).
- mating nucs with populations of 600g of bees were in between by the mating #s (using 1/4 Dadant frames and 1/2 Dadant frames)
Overall, the strongest mating nucs had the best mating numbers and these were conclusive test results (they claim so).
In the strong nucs they got ~40% success rate.
In the weak nucs they got ~20% success rate.
While the trial #s are pretty poor overall, still the weak vs. strong nuc #s are significantly different.
So, I personally just have standard nucs with 2-3 full size frames with good bee coverage as my mating nucs (just for equipment re-usability and standardization).
But I am yet to see the "horrible mating numbers" beeks are talking about.
It maybe people should revisit these ideas of mating with micro-nuc equipment.
It may work fine if you mate 100s of queens and high tolerance for failure rates.
It may NOT work too well if you only mate 5-10 queens for personal use.
So this is the comment.
Minnis are for those who would otherwise have a surplus of cells
love to see the Iliazov # on success
figure 8.8 pees per gram, a cup used to stock a mini (600) is like 68g of bees, so one could stock 13 mini nucs with the same resources as the "best" in your Iliazov example
to put it in figures more appuacal to this forums reader's
one deep frame, with 60% capped brood and cover bees is around 6,000 bees one the brood emerges. So you can run at least 10 minis for the same bee costs as one of the 2F deep mateing nucs that are in vogue right now.
Once you start cellbuilding cultured and portable cells (grafts, cell punch, cut strip, etc) its not much effort to have way more cell per week then you could ever use in fullsized nucs, even after culling dink cells.
end goles also matter.. many people talk "mateing nucs" when they mean splits that will raize a queen and grow out.
I don't disagree.
Myself I only do queen-less splits around the QCs - these are not even mating nucs, technically.
Simple that way - I can do immediate re-splits/re-combines of these nucs on the spot (thanks to the frame compatibility).
I don't need single-use equipment to juggle about.
I only need 5-10 home-raised queens if so - don't really have time/desire/business model to manage tens and hundreds of new queens.
So this simple, homesteader method works fine.
Yesterday found a newly laying queen in a single-frame nuc - just pulled a QC out, so not to waste it - she mated fine - a good stand-by queen to be combined anywhere I need.
There are plenty of bee-eating predators out - this is mid-July.
Still, I am yet to see the "horrible, terrible mating numbers".
Maybe next week I will see just that.
Somehow doubt it.
So, yes, I hope OP is doing better now..
But 3/15 (20%) per a batch is really amounts to wasted time while the summer time is limited.
Also, I am targeting the ideal mating to occur while my own drones are in the air - so the ideal time frame is even more limited.
Mating time window is the really most valuable and limited resource (for open mating).
Especially so if you also then plan to grow the new starts into the winter - using newly-mated queens - these starts must be started not later than July - to be able to grow enough.
Cost of the bees saved on the mating nuc configs - is really trivial and not that important to worry about it (for a small scale - 5-10-15 queens - beek, not a big business).
PS: I guess I am just talking myself out of mini-nuc project - well done. hahaha
Still struggling. Went through them again last night and did not find any new ones. I did have one that had a ton more bees and wondered if it was bees a queen brings back after mating. Had to put them in a 5 frame nuc to give them room.
Still have a couple more rounds to do. Have some in the cooker to go in the nucs and some in the starter to go into the cooker. Some of the nucs are so calm its like there is a queen but not seeing any signs.
In my limited knowledge of this queen breeding thing, I can't see the size of any individual nuc mattering. She is going out and breeding with others in a different area so what does the home yard really matter?
I have a really hard time coughing up that kind of money for a mini mating nuc Styrofoam box. I much prefer to build my own 2 frames. Between all of them i think i'll have a good size colony or two when i put them to bed for the winter.
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