# Making nucs with Pseudo strips until having a queen



## drlonzo (Apr 15, 2014)

The literature that I find on the product states for several days, however the product also comes with another "Bee Boost" product that states for up to 5 weeks. 

Has anyone out there done a study to find out how long they last?


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

I believe Michael Bush has said it depends on the number of "touches" the bees make on it. I use them, but it's never for more than 3 days so I can't say how long.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I have no experience purposely using them long term to set up nucs. I've had packages shipped with them (I provided the strips so I could get bees to set up mating nucs earlier). I've used them to lure bees out of trees. I've never really used them the way you intend, but one of the ones that came in the packages ended up in the bottom of a nuc and for about a month I would always find a fist sized cluster of bees in there even though there was no brood and no comb and no queen.


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

Until you get a queen on there, all the bees can do is grow old and die....or eat up resources from strong hives.


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## jean-marc (Jan 13, 2005)

Cristian:

Why not make the nucs, let them raise cells. Virgins will get mated. After all you are taking resources from hives that want to swarm. So already they have cells started. The only issue is then mating. That should be fine unless it is rainy at that time period. I would give the nucs open larva not capped brood. It will give them something to do, at a minimum another queen cell.

Jean-Marc


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## Cristian (Jul 28, 2014)

jean-marc said:


> Cristian:
> 
> Why not make the nucs, let them raise cells. Virgins will get mated. After all you are taking resources from hives that want to swarm. So already they have cells started. The only issue is then mating. That should be fine unless it is rainy at that time period. I would give the nucs open larva not capped brood. It will give them something to do, at a minimum another queen cell.
> 
> Jean-Marc


Yeah , it is a idea . First i wanted to mate queens just in my mini mating nucs but in case of swarmng i will mate queens in the normal deep frame nucs until having cell builders ready . A trick will be with the weather ...rain, rain, rain .


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## Sasha (Feb 22, 2005)

You are missing something. If swarming for you starts in April, that is the time when you can start queen rearing.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

Michael Bush said:


> I have no experience purposely using them long term to set up nucs. I've had packages shipped with them (I provided the strips so I could get bees to set up mating nucs earlier). I've used them to lure bees out of trees. I've never really used them the way you intend, but one of the ones that came in the packages ended up in the bottom of a nuc and for about a month I would always find a fist sized cluster of bees in there even though there was no brood and no comb and no queen.



OH EM GEE ! I never thought about using them for trapouts! Someone posted last yr about increasing the success of getting the queen by using a caged junk queen in a cleo Hogan setup.


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## Lburou (May 13, 2012)

About the pseudo Queen strips. I called the manufacturer last year and spoke to one of their experts (don't remember the expert's title if it was mentioned). I was told the strips are good for at least two to three weeks in the hive with bees. 

I have used them in Mating NUCs as they raise their own queen from eggs. No difficulty with that, of course, they would have been fine on their own anyway.

My decision to use the pseudo queen strips was where I was experimenting and trying to suppress development of ovaries in laying workers after shaking the bees 20 ft from NUC and then adding eggs. It seemed to work, but again, they should have been all right anyway. HTH


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## WilliamsHoneyBees (Feb 17, 2010)

Sasha said:


> You are missing something. If swarming for you starts in April, that is the time when you can start queen rearing.


I agree. If the bees are naturally wanting to swarm and that is your reasoning for wanting to make up splits to keep them from swarming you should have adequate drones to complete the task of making up mating nucs. Maybe I am missing something here from the USA though.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>...I was experimenting and trying to suppress development of ovaries in laying workers...

But queen pheromones will not suppress laying workers...

http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm#pheromones

See page 11 of Wisdom of the hive:

"the queen's pheromones are neither necessary nor sufficient for inhibiting worker's ovaries. Instead, they strongly inhibit the workers from rearing additional queens. It is now clear that the pheromones that provide the proximate stimulus for workers to refrain from laying eggs come mainly from the brood, not from the queen (reviewed in Seeling 1985; see also Willis, Winston, and Slessor 1990)."


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## Lburou (May 13, 2012)

Michael Bush said:


> ...But queen pheromones will not suppress laying workers...


It is well known that brood pheromones suppress laying workers. I was experimenting after reading John B. Free and his reports by Voogd and later Melojevic, referenced here...



John B. Free in _Pheromones of Social Bee_ said:


> "Voogd (1955) found that dead queens she had extracted with acetone no longer inhibited ovary development, but did so again when impregnated with acetone extracts from other queens. Administration of Queen extract could cause retrogression of worker's ovaries in a queenless colony, (Melojevic et.al., 1963)."


In these mating NUCs, brood alone had failed to suppress laying workers, by combining brood pheromones with the pseudo queen pheromones, was looking to bring inhibitory pheromones to the next level and see what happened.


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## Tim B (Apr 16, 2009)

See page 11 of Wisdom of the hive:

"the queen's pheromones are neither necessary nor sufficient for inhibiting worker's ovaries. Instead, they strongly inhibit the workers from rearing additional queens. It is now clear that the pheromones that provide the proximate stimulus for workers to refrain from laying eggs come mainly from the brood, not from the queen (reviewed in Seeling 1985; see also Willis, Winston, and Slessor 1990)."[/QUOTE]

If this were the case then why don't laying workers arise during the lengthy broodless periods during the winter or during delayed queen replacement. I have not seen laying workers arise in hives where a queen goes bad and quits laying at all for a few weeks while if you remove a queen and brood from a hive it will have laying workers within two weeks. There has to be more to it than that the brood and not the queen inhibits workers from laying.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>If this were the case then why don't laying workers arise during the lengthy broodless periods during the winter or during delayed queen replacement. I have not seen laying workers arise in hives where a queen goes bad and quits laying at all for a few weeks while if you remove a queen and brood from a hive it will have laying workers within two weeks. There has to be more to it than that the brood and not the queen inhibits workers from laying.

Obviously it's not as simple as all one thing or another, winter seems to be a special case, yet I have many times shut down all of the laying workers by adding open brood, so queen pheromones were not necessary to suppress laying workers, brood pheromones were.


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