You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: 🐝 Beekeeping For Everyone! - #12 - Let's Make Splits & Queens
Much to complicated. Don't get me wrong it will work just more complicated than actually needed. I have raised queens professionaly for many years. There is no need to damage comb to get a new queen. It is far simpler to just remove bees eggs and larvae into a nuc box. Let them draw cells. Watch @beemasterca for up coming post and videos.
You surely can't be advocating emergency queens raised by a nuc as quality queens. Walk away splits are the biggest cause for fall queen failures.
Did not say that. Queens should be raised to capped in the largest queenless hives you can create. In properly done splits you can be right. Mating is done in the smallest nuc practical. By the way you distributed a nuc for the queen. Not a artificial or shaken swarm. Which in fact has no brood in the box the queen and bees are placed in. This a direct simulation of a natural swarm queen bees no brood. Just a clarification of the terms to avoid confusion in a world of confusion for the new bee.
OK, then I'm still not following you about your 'much to complicated' statement. Every professional queen breeder I know uses grafting for queen rearing, myself included. Grafting is not feasible for the average novice as it takes practice and continuous use to maintain the skill, not to mention additional equipment. Yes there are other none grafting methods, but in my experience OTS has been easy to teach to students, they comprehend the process and need no additional equipment. I have a lot more novice beekeepers raising their own queens now that I teach OTS than before OTS.
As far as 'artificial swarm' terminology, I used it in reference to the mother hive in which the queen was removed from. In their perspective, the queen and a partion of the bees leaving is 'seen' as swarming and it will prevent/remove the swarming impulse. The removal of some brood with them is irrelevant to the way the mother colony reacts. Yes, you are correct that the nuc made from this removal is not an artificial swarm in itself.
I will do a main post on beginner and small operations queen rearing in the next week or so. No cutting of comb required.
I have grafted thousand of queens over the years. But like you don't recommend it to anyone with less than 100 hives. Then only if they want to be stock producers.
Over the years of mentoring not being clear with terms has lead to much confusion among inexperienced and not vary knowledgeable beekeepers like yourself. We as mentors take it for granted that because the term seems so simple that all should know. Forgetting that it took years to overcome our own confusion of terms. You did make a nuc with the old queen. She will recover to a full size hive in short order. We do this every spring with our last years queens for sale.
We sell shaken swarms or artificial swarms as an alternative to brood based nucs. There are disease and equipment reason for doing this. Simply put we shake the bees and add a queen in the customers box, in the position of the old hive. A full box of bees is our aiming point. Far stronger than a natural swarm. We move the brood to another yard and place on incubators. We keep the equipment that would normally gone out with.
The customer gets a natural varoa mite treatment, due to the interruption of the brood cycle. Reduced risk of accidental brood disease transmission contained in the breeders equipment and brood.
Of course there are disadvantages.
For the breeder there is a lot of extra work. Moving brood and equipment. Monitoring customer hives until pickup after conformation of egg laying.
For the customer. Hauling full size equipment to the breeders yard killing time for conformation of eggs.
One reason most folks go for nucs.
AND they are getting locally acclimated bees which is a big advantage over package bees from the south. Though I'm not sure where Canada gets packages from. I have a good friend in Nova Scotia and know the bee "laws" are much stricter.
Mostly Kowna and new Zealand because of varoa. issues. You make a vary good point about localised bees. Our queens from the Okanagan BC over winter in Alberta Saskatchewan and Manitoba outside on their first winter. Imported from tropical and semi tropical areas must be wintered inside the first year. If they even survived introduction in the spring. Majority are replaced. due both to the nature of packages and coming from areas with vary different climates.
local bees are far superior to imports provided of course there are enough bees in your area for proper mating. Queens need to mate with lots of drone from different hives to keep the genetic diversity high in the hive. I like to see 20 families in the box one for each drone they mated with.