Queens emerging

783 Views 5 Replies 4 Participants Last post by Fivej, Jul 3, 2020

crofter

Discussion Starter · #1 · Jul 2, 2020

Here are some results of my first attempt at grafting for queen rearing. Grafted evening of June 20. First emerging morning July 2. Pictures are afternoon. Little less than 12 full days from grafting so larvae age selection seems ok.

The virgin queen leading the mob on the one cell had emerged just previously from an adjacent cell. She sure was interested in that other cell! It has the opening about half sized and the virgin within was cowering back. I brushed the bees off and let her emerge into the honey supers of another hive.

The cell with closeup of bottom is emerging into a colony whose queen was (I think) being superceded but is still laying well. She did not bother the cell. Will be
interesting to see whether they work together or ??

Should have tried grafting years ago

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crofter

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Joined May 5, 2011

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Discussion Starter · #5 · Jul 3, 2020

calkal said:
I forgot to mention that I will be checking to see how many of the Queen's got mated and came back laying on the 1st round tomorrow, then I will check every Friday for each consecutive round.

That many queens will burn out quite a bunch of drones! I commonly have quite a few dragon flies but I very rarely have fail to return mated. Everything I have read seems to suggest I have the prime requisites for a drone congregation area very, very close, so the virgins dont have to risk a long search. The only other kept bees are about 3 miles away; no ferals here that anyone knows of.

50 cells at a time tells me you are playing in a whole different league!:applause: