# New Virgin versus Mated Queen



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Hi, All!

Did another mating nuc inspection tonight to see whether or not the capped queen cell has emerged.
Look under the bottom of the frame where the capped cell was and found that it has been uncapped. 
Now there should be a virgin roaming around if this was a successful hatch. Curious and anxious to
see what color this potential new queen look like. From the other queen cells that I got they were the carnis mix mutts.
Then saw this little long abdomen virgin that has its wings almost tug in a bit roaming on the comb.
So this one turn out to be the good genetics that I once thought was lost because of the 90% carnis drones 
out there. Then broke off the queen cell to see if there was any remaining RJ on the bottom. To my surprise there was
almost 1/4" of the semi-dry out RJ remaining. Now I know this was a well fed soon to be good laying queen in a rather medium strong mating nuc hive. The queen cell was average in size. I'm curious as to what drones are still out there for this new virgin this late of the year. Last year on early September was when I suspended my queen rearing operation. This year was almost a month beyond due to the prolong summer heat.

New virgin queen hatched today:


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Con't:

Of all the mated queens from my hatch before, they all have the
extended round heavy abdomen beyond their wings. When comparing these to the newly
hatched virgin queens, it is obvious that the virgins have the 
smaller rounded abdomen still tug inside their wings a bit extended. Can you see
the difference?
Seeing this color gives me some hope to continue their genetics. It is not all lost!

Here are the mated queens:


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Nice pics in the first post Beepro, that's a beautiful virgin you have there. You got lucky with the colour, just hope she can find some nice drones to mate with!


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## GaryG74 (Apr 9, 2014)

Nice photos! Nice colors on all the queens! Thanks for sharing.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

You should be ok Beepro, I just got two mated, one more to go, should've emerged this weekend. I can't even say what happened to the original queen in this one...... new queen from MP, laid up 3 frames solid brood, I inspected first time in a week or two, found some queencells, few eggs left, no queen. I did find her abdomen with two back legs attached outside the hive on the ground, still fresh... can't even explain that.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Yes, this year has been hard to keep a mated queen alive through out the entire year. Maybe it is the drought we are having here and the queen shuts down.
The workers will interpret that as a bad poor laying queen and try to get rid of her asap. Looks like your situation is much the same as some of my other hives. Luckily, I am able to keep all of them queen right with the local mated queens. Some splits also received a mated queen from the snow country. I just wanted to see how a snow region raised queen will do here. 
So maybe in the future to only select to graft from the not so often supersede queens to raise here. I'll try to patty sub and syrup feed them just before the 3 months summer dearth next year to see what will happen.


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

I'd bet that the virgin will win the bout of "New virgin vs mated queen".
Are there odds? Can I bet? Is there a limit?
Let me know how it goes.


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