# Does doing a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?



## Clayton Huestis (Jan 6, 2013)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

Yes it is queen rearing of the most basic form I suppose. It can be done anywhere but the window is smaller the farther north you go. Personally the OTS method is better. A large colony that is well provisioned makes the cells. Then it is broken down into nucs of whatever size there after. OTS link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4YRr_pZpH8 If you merge OTS with Mike Palmers nuc system you get a very strong sustainable apiary system.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

Using a Snelgrove division board would be a fair bit removed (improved) method. In the north walk away splits pretty much precludes much of a honey harvest and barely two colonies strong enough to winter. The snelgrove splits gives quite dependable swarm control as a bonus.

Walk aways sure is simplicity. No fun at all!


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

Walk away. 
What you do when you walked away from what needs to be done, to do what you want to do. 
What you do when you know it will be a while before you can come back.


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



Clayton Huestis said:


> Yes it is queen rearing of the most basic form I suppose. It can be done anywhere but the window is smaller the farther north you go. Personally the OTS method is better. A large colony that is well provisioned makes the cells. Then it is broken down into nucs of whatever size there after. OTS link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4YRr_pZpH8 If you merge OTS with Mike Palmers nuc system you get a very strong sustainable apiary system.


The video was very good, thanks for the link. I am going to do this; have been sustainable for a few years except buying queens for genetics, but this will be better.


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## Absinthe (Feb 26, 2016)

Does it actually work? Do you do it?


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

I tried David's method and was not successful at getting mated returned queens. Minimum for me is three frames in a nuc with at least 2000-3000 bees, about 1#. Works most of the time. When the nuc grows to five frames, it is sold.


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## Clayton Huestis (Jan 6, 2013)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



> Does it actually work? Do you do it?


OTS system works. I use it too. Some years I use it exclusively. Or I graft along side using it. Here is what I wrote for those looking for an intro into TF beekeeping, but by no means do you have to be TF to use it. https://www.beesource.com/forums/sh...in-a-world-that-treats&highlight=world+treats


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

It could work, depending.

Didn't watch the video to see the guy exactly, but my feeling is the beekeeper would still need to have skills and an understanding of bees. Otherwise he will end up with a bunch of empty robbed out 2 framers.

Cos he could do it at the wrong time of year, wrong place, wrong aged bees in the splits (old ones will just fly home, young ones will not defend), and a bunch of other things can go wrong. 

The method as described by Absinthe sounds simple, but I bet there is a learning curve even so.

Some queens produced by this method will be good, quite a few will be second rate.


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## Absinthe (Feb 26, 2016)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

I am guessing that the OTS technique is about having a large colony use more resources to 1. Create emergency queen cells 2. In positions you want them to be. vs these 2 Frame walk-aways that just base off of a frame of brood only has the bees that were attached to the frame given to bring up a queen cell. 

I get the intuitive aspect of how they both work. The concept makes as much sense as any. And in any event, I have never tried any technique at all, because I was trying to never have more than one colony in my yard ever. That has to change. And I am thouroughly willing to not have a honey harvest, if it guarantees that I have multiple overwintered colonies come spring.

I guess what I want to see or talk with is someone doing stuff 1. Preferably in NC 2. WIthout a huge bee yard. 

I love what Michael Palmer does, but I neither have the space or the powerful existing colonies to do what he does. And at least as far as I can tell, it doesn't really scale down well.


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## ifixoldhouses (Feb 27, 2019)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

I made 10 queens this way, in March.


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## Absinthe (Feb 26, 2016)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



ifixoldhouses said:


> I made 10 queens this way, in March.


Because of the way this forum formats things, it is hard to tell, which responses go with which. When you say you made 10 Q's this way. Is that with the 2 frame walk-aways or with the OTS. Not that they are mutually exclusive necessary. I just wonder mostly about making 2 frame nucs rather than 5 frame nucs...


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## WillH (Jun 25, 2010)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



Oldtimer said:


> Cos he could do it at the wrong time of year, wrong place, wrong aged bees in the splits (old ones will just fly home, young ones will not defend), and a bunch of other things can go wrong.


:thumbsup:


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

"guarantees that I have multiple overwintered colonies come spring." There are no guarantees. A walk away for one hive is a high risk low reward. Nothing or poor queens is the most probable.
With one hive, honestly the best hives and queens are going to be made by forcing them into swarm mode. If you want hives in the spring, make quality not quantity in the summer.

What do you have in the one hive? single, double deep?


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

I guess one can call it queen rearing if you throw a few bees in a box and let them grow out a queen cell. Question I would ask, is that a quality product that you would want to buy ? Conversely, is it a quality product you would be comfortable selling? Throwing bees in a box is essentially allowing the bees to make wild cells, with no efforts to ensure they use appropriately aged larvae and the resulting cell is properly fed.

Quality of a product is usually a function of how much care and attention is provided at each step of the production process. When I'm raising queens, I graft and use a cell builder, and have good reasons for each step in the process. I am clear with folks on one detail, I produce queens, I am NOT a breeder. We pick from our best for grafting, but, I dont spend endless hours doing freeze tests etc, I only use two criteria for selection. First is winter survival, but that's just a given, cannot graft from a queen that didn't survive the winter. Second is honey production the prior year. We weigh supers coming off hives, so I have a record of honey produced for each colony.

Why do I raise queens the way I do ?

- Grafting allows me precise control of the age of the larva that goes in each queen cell. Wild cells can come from larvae that isn't at the ideal age when it's chosen to make a queen cell. I always graft significantly more cups than I need, and they come from a frame where I have confirmed fresh eggs a few days prior. I graft on Wednesday, so we confirm frames that have eggs standing on end Sunday afternoon. When you look at them on Wednesday you will often see small puddles of jelly in the bottom of the cell, and without the magnification I cannot see a larvae in that puddle. that's ideal age larvae. If they are curled into the C shape they are getting a bit on the old side.

- I use a cloak board system for qeenless start and queenright finish. I create this colony at the start of the season by combining the core of two brood nests into a single stack with the cloak board in place. I go thru it on my weekly schedule and move capped brood up above the excluder, and make sure there is empty comb below. It's a two box system that's always on the verge of swarming, loaded with bees and I have to manipulate frames to keep it that way. 

- My builder hive always has a 15% patty from Global patties on when they are raising cells. They also get 2 cups of syrup when the cell bars go in.

- I use jzbz cups and go back 48 hours after graft. Any cups that are not full to the brim with royal jelly get culled at this point.

- My mating nucs are made up with 5 half size deep frames, and they have _at least_ 3 seams full of bees at start of season to ensure they can keep the cell properly incubated till it emerges. As season progresses we have to shake bees out of them regularly. I harvest queens 3 weeks after placing cells if there is at least one full sheet of capped brood, and we look carefully at the pattern before marking and caging that queen. If it's at all a shotgun pattern, she gets pinched rather than caged.

The final product is something I would pay good money for to purchase myself because for us the raising of queens is about the quality at each step of the process. 

So behind door number one is a queen in a cage, she came when somebody threw a bunch of bees in a box then returned in a month to cage her. Behind door number two is a queen in a cage that just came out of one of my mating nucs. Both are the same price, which would you rather have ?


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



> Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?


yes... not good or modern queen rearing but queen rearing none the less...
in its most basic form and inclusive definition queen rearing is human induced production of queens.

keep an eye on this SARE project at UMASS https://projects.sare.org/sare_project/one19-326/
It has been said they are going to test micro/"pauper" walk away splits. Sam comfort has been working with 1/2 deep frame splits. it apears they draw more cells and then tear down the poor ones, leaveing better queens... but the results have been inconsistent.. 

By far the worst way to make queens is to make a hive queen less and then break it up in to a bunch of nucs.. my experience is nless then 50% of those queens are any good (sam says only 20%)

I have a great example of this right now in an out yard.. booming hive had to be split late march to prevent swarming and I hadn't even set up cell builders yet.. did a fly back split, once cells were capped pulled 2 nucs out of the dubble deep and set them side by side
pinched the rest of the cells in the dubble and used it for 2 rounds of cell building.
nucs grew out and were supered in common so it runs as a 2 queen hive.. so same location, same gentnics, same work force! and one queen is producing 1/2 the brood of the other

I sudder when I hear of people paying good money for E-queen nucs


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

msl,
queen away or queen stay?
What did you leave for brood and nurse bees?


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## Absinthe (Feb 26, 2016)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



grozzie2 said:


> I guess one can call it queen rearing if you throw a few bees in a box and let them grow out a queen cell. Question I would ask, is that a quality product that you would want to buy ? Conversely, is it a quality product you would be comfortable selling? Throwing bees in a box is essentially allowing the bees to make wild cells, with no efforts to ensure they use appropriately aged larvae and the resulting cell is properly fed.
> 
> Quality of a product is usually a function of how much care and attention is provided at each step of the production process. When I'm raising queens, I graft and use a cell builder, and have good reasons for each step in the process. I am clear with folks on one detail, I produce queens, I am NOT a breeder. We pick from our best for grafting, but, I dont spend endless hours doing freeze tests etc, I only use two criteria for selection. First is winter survival, but that's just a given, cannot graft from a queen that didn't survive the winter. Second is honey production the prior year. We weigh supers coming off hives, so I have a record of honey produced for each colony.
> 
> ...


This is what I expect when i hear "queen rearing" or "queen raising" and it definitely sounds like a full time deal. Very time critical and well disciplined.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

queen and 1 frame of open brood left at the old site in new box 
old boxs with the rest of the resources moved 8' down the outher end of the stand
after e-cells were drawn old boxs were moved 4' (to the center of the stand) and the pulled nucs were placed side by side in its location. 
the old boxs after moved to center were used fro 2 rounds of cellbuilding.. (nice fat cells and good performing queens, pinched about 10% of the virgins before placeing in mateing nucs)
After the virgins emerged (as had all the brood ) the old boxs in the center they were given a shot of OAV and shook out to stock mini mating nucs
the boxes/combs were then given to the old location to make it a dubble deep and the dubble nuc to make it a 10 over 5x5


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

Appreciate the details. Been debating in my head how many brood frames and how many nurse bees makes sense for the amount of foragers.

Your sequence of moving the foragers back to the nucs makes sense. Closer to the Snelgrove sequence. The old queens fate?


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## ifixoldhouses (Feb 27, 2019)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



Absinthe said:


> Because of the way this forum formats things, it is hard to tell, which responses go with which. When you say you made 10 Q's this way. Is that with the 2 frame walk-aways or with the OTS. Not that they are mutually exclusive necessary. I just wonder mostly about making 2 frame nucs rather than 5 frame nucs...


with 2 framers and walk away split cells, I moved the queen to a nuc with a few frames, then went back and moved the cells the big hive made.


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## delber (Dec 26, 2010)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

In my area 2 frames arent' enough to raise a queen but it is enough to keep a capped queen cell warm and get her mated well. I make my own boxes to put 3) 2 frames in a box. (Wall, 2 frames, divider, 2 frames, divider, 2 frames, opposite wall). This has worked very well for me. I have seen guys that try to use small mating nucs and have a sorry small swarm try to go with a virgin queen. Doing it this way I can leave the queen alone for the entire month until capped brood before I go in to look. I get nice queens this way. I must say I like the OTS idea. This is a nice tool. I have used Oldtimer's "cut cell method" with good success and is the basic gist of what I currently do. I have watched Barnyardbees' videos and have wondered about it as well but I thought he gave the 1 frame "hive" a q-cell. He also puts them in a place where there was one before so the older / defending bees will still return to that hive to protect it. If he is in Ga. then it all makes sense. As was said earlier "you can do just about anything in Ga".


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## Amibusiness (Oct 3, 2016)

I think I read that 60% of walk away queens are below average (larvae too old, not optimal conditions...), based on viable and numerous sperm in the spermatheca. I her that "not good" rate goes up when a tiny colony raises the cell: add bad queen nutrition to the mix. So if it's a one frame walk away I would not count it as queen rearing. If he's adding a cell it may well work in GA. Around here (upstate NY) the only way to get a queen return from that few bees is in a mini. For full sized frames 3 works and can push to two but with the population of a 3 frame nuc. Sometimes our mating nucs swarm on the first round if there is more than 1 cell. Ie high population.
Grozzies method sounds like queen rearing. It would be fairly easy to add other metrics (some of which he may well do): gentleness, if the colonies are otherwise similar deffinitely take from the one that is nicer.... Mite response: if you keep track of mite counts.... Longevity: again if 2 are similar; or amount of propolis and swarminess or other traits. Have an order of importance and "when you come to a fork in the road, take it."


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## ifixoldhouses (Feb 27, 2019)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

I pull the queen and a couple of frames of brood to create a swarm effect, I put her in a nuc to start over. There's a whole hive full of resources to make a new queen out of countless options. after they are capped I put them in a 2 frame with bees to mate, I don't see how that would be a "not good" queen? After it mated you could either requeen another colony or put them in a nuc, or sell them.


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## 123989 (Jul 30, 2018)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

I get sooooo impressed when people say how they raise queens. I have bought a couple of queens from Barnyard bees and they were laying machines. As far as all the " selecting" Queens, bees have been raising queens a lot longer the we have and I would say they know how to do it.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



ifixoldhouses said:


> ...... *after they are capped I put them in a 2 frame with bees to mate, I don't see how that would be a "not good" queen?.*.....


The original 2-frame nuc idea is - using 2-frame as all-in-one "the starter and the finisher and the mater".
Your 2-frame nuc is only "the finisher and the mater" - a very significant difference.

As long as the QCs are started in a strong colony and are capped there - the critical part is done.
The finishing and the mating part can be successfully done in a tiny foam box with a cup of bees (or a 2-framer, all the same).


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



> Queens, bees have been raising queens a lot longer the we have and I would say they know how to do i


they do,its called swarming, and it makes great queens. From the moment the larva hatches it is treated as a queen, fed and tended by a hive with a booming population and plenty of nectar and pollen 

emergency queens are rare in nature, out side of a bear attack or what not, its very uncommon for a hive to just go queen less all of a sudden.
The bees choose older larva and the result is a poorer qualty queen (grafted and swarm queens are about 50% better).. 

While it seem counter intuitive at first , cell building with "cultured" cells (graft,strip,punch,etc) is more "natural" It's done to mimic the swarming conditions of plenty of everything and young larva 

Queen quality has the single most inpact on hive performance, AND its with in our contoral

FP quoting Steve Tabor, Breeding Super Bees


Fusion_power said:


> Quoting from the book:
> In the late 30's and early 40's the USDA Bee Culture Lab in Madison, Wisconsin started a program to determine which stocks available from queen breeders were best. Two-pound packages with queens were placed on combs on or about April 15. Brood production, population, and total honey production were monitored carefully. Some of these package colonies barely made winter stores, but a few did pretty well, producing 150 to 250 pounds above winter requirements. But one breeder consistently produced queens that developed colonies producing 250 to 450 pounds of honey over winter requirements.
> 
> Madison's Farrar, and other government beemen then spent time visiting and making observations of that particular queen breeder, and methodology developed in his queen-rearing operation. The conclusion was the stock was no better than available anywhere else. That's right! When we reared queens from that stock or from stock obtained from the poorly performing groups, we turned out very high-performance queens. So it wasn't the stock that was good -- it was the queen breeder. What stood out more than anything was his care and selection of each queen cell and queen every step of the way.
> ...


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## ifixoldhouses (Feb 27, 2019)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



GregV said:


> The original 2-frame nuc idea is - using 2-frame as all-in-one "the starter and the finisher and the mater".
> Your 2-frame nuc is only "the finisher and the mater" - a very significant difference.
> 
> As long as the QCs are started in a strong colony and are capped there - the critical part is done.
> The finishing and the mating part can be successfully done in a tiny foam box with a cup of bees (or a 2-framer, all the same).


That would be crazy using a 2 frame to do it all,I was thinking the way I've been doing it was right, those 2 framers are awesome if you keep a robbing screen on them.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



ifixoldhouses said:


> That would be crazy using a 2 frame to do it all........


But in fact, that is exactly what it is (when done as described in the Post #1).


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

and post #16 shows a 1/2 frame all in 1

if rearing good queens was as simple as puling a bunch of 2f nucs, prices would be much lower .


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## Absinthe (Feb 26, 2016)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



fadder said:


> I get sooooo impressed when people say how they raise queens. I have bought a couple of queens from Barnyard bees and they were laying machines. As far as all the " selecting" Queens, bees have been raising queens a lot longer the we have and I would say they know how to do it.


This is the outfit whole videos I was watching that prompted the question. He just seemed to suggest when you had a frame of brood and eggs you could toss them in a 2 frame with an empty frame and it would just make a new colony. It sounded like it was too good to be true.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



Absinthe said:


> This is the outfit whole videos I was watching that prompted the question. He just seemed to suggest when you had a frame of brood and eggs you could toss them in a 2 frame with an empty frame and it would just make a new colony. It sounded like it was too good to be true.


Well, you said yourself - everything is possible in GA.


But again, why not?
Make 10 of these; evaluate the resulting queens; combine down to 2-3-4 best out of the bunch.
It is not really a binary choice.


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## JConnolly (Feb 21, 2015)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

Given how big of a difference it made the time I made my first packed cell starter verses my only sort of packed starters before that, I'm skeptical that a two frame split is capable of raising an excellent queen. 

I kinda suck at grafting, my acceptance is around 50%, so I graft twice as many cups as I have mating nucs (8). So when I had two hives that were packed side by side I made up a cell starter nuc that was literally boiling with bees from both hives. Six out of 14 were accepted and those girls stuffed the JZ BZ cups with jelly and those queens were very big girls. I'd heard over and over some people emphasize how much starters needed to be stuffed, and I though I had been giving them enough, but that time the starter was stuffed. That was a lot of resources I committed to getting just a few cells started, but those queens have been prolific performers to the point I am all out of supers this year, I've had to use deeps as supers, I've split them, and their hives are still packed, and the ones I sold in nucs the customers have said they have exploded.

If you want lots of easy queens, maybe two frame splits will make you large numbers for low effort. If you want good performing queens, use a cell starter that is as strong as you can possibly make it. I use the two framers for cells that have already been capped once they are close to emerging.


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## Absinthe (Feb 26, 2016)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



GregV said:


> Well, you said yourself - everything is possible in GA.
> 
> 
> But again, why not?
> ...


I think I need a more conservative, less risky strategy.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



Absinthe said:


> I think I need a more conservative, less risky strategy.


Creating a strong queen-less unit is all you need - as discussed.
You can graft into it; you can do OTS into it; you can let them do the natural thing.
Once the QCs have been caped and are close to hatching - distribute them around as direct queen replacements (more risky) or into the mating nucs (less risky).
All it is you need to do for a small-scale backyarder.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

I find that the E cells produced by full sized hives are usually of good quality. It takes at least three frames of bees and a shake to get good queens from a walk away split. Even then, it can be hit and miss.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

Take the queen out of the hive with her on a frame of brood and a frame of honey and put it in your two frame nuc. Ten days later take every frame of brood that has a queen cell and put it with a frame of honey in your two frame nucs and return the original queen to the hive. Now you have well fed queens reared by a strong colony instead of poorly fed queens reared by a weak colony.


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## ifixoldhouses (Feb 27, 2019)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



Michael Bush said:


> Take the queen out of the hive with her on a frame of brood and a frame of honey and put it in your two frame nuc. Ten days later take every frame of brood that has a queen cell and put it with a frame of honey in your two frame nucs and return the original queen to the hive. Now you have well fed queens reared by a strong colony instead of poorly fed queens reared by a weak colony.


Now that's the way to do it, can you just throw her back in there without reintroducing her? and will it stop the swarm impulse?


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

this is a good sum up 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MFp80hG4dw


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## Absinthe (Feb 26, 2016)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



Michael Bush said:


> Take the queen out of the hive with her on a frame of brood and a frame of honey and put it in your two frame nuc. Ten days later take every frame of brood that has a queen cell and put it with a frame of honey in your two frame nucs and return the original queen to the hive. Now you have well fed queens reared by a strong colony instead of poorly fed queens reared by a weak colony.


Is this a reasonable way to do things? So if I am understanding this correctly, I am imagining a double deep 8 frame setup with bees coming out all over the place. Pull the queen and a frame of brood and a frame of honey and put her in a "safekeeping" 2 frame nuc, or even a full 8 frame box and let them draw out some frames?. Back fill the original hive with 2 more empty frames or perhaps drawn comb. This original hive, now queenless should start to make queen cells from very early larva because they exist? Or they will make it from any of the 1-3 day-olds they find without differentiation? So, in 10 days each frame that had young enough larva on it should now have a queen cell or two, closed up and ready to pop within the next (at most 6) days. They should likely be on all of the frames, with the possible exception of the 2 outer ones that have tended to be resource only frames, and the 2 frames that were added, so if she was laying in both boxes this has the potential of 8 frames with Q cells on it. Though, if the flow was on, and they had honey above the central brood frames, she may have only been laying in the bottom so more likely at most 5. For argument's sake, let's say 5. If each of those 5 frames was put in a 2 frame nuc with a frame of honey, there is a good potential to come up with all 5 of them going out and getting mated and coming back? Meanwhile, sticking the original queen back into the original hive would be sufficient for them to merely accept her back and go back to being happy queenright and so forth? I don't assume that you would necessarily do much supering on a 2 frame nuc. So once the mated queens come back and start laying, they get an upgrade to 5F nuc or a whole 8F box? Then assuming some had bird, dragonfly, windshield etc. related incidents, if someone doesn't return, simply combine the rest of the bees in the little nuc back to one of the others? 

If this works, why doesn't everyone do it? What am I missing? Sounds too easy.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



Absinthe said:


> ........If this works, why doesn't everyone do it? What am I missing? Sounds too easy.


And now comes the "hard part" - go and try it and see for yourself.
I think, Absinthe, you tend to fall into "analysis paralysis" loop.
Seriously.
I kind of lost counts of all the multiple directions of the discussions you started by now.


Instead, do a practical iteration of "*something*" and at least learn from it.
Based on your *own *observations and conclusions - make gradual change and repeat the program OR change the course entirely.
And so on.

So - what are you going to do?
The season is here and now and the clock is ticking.


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## Absinthe (Feb 26, 2016)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



GregV said:


> And now comes the "hard part" - go and try it and see for yourself.
> I think, Absinthe, you tend to fall into "analysis paralysis" loop.
> Seriously.
> I kind of lost counts of all the multiple directions of the discussions you started by now.
> ...


All I can do is research, read, watch stuff, and ask questions for now. I hear no clock ticking, I believe (especially with all this stupid rain) that catching a swarm for me right now would simply be a fluke. 

I doubt I will catch a swarm this year, and swarm season is just about over, and looks like torrential rain until then anyway. So It doesn't look like I will have any bees to do any "try it and see what happens" kind of stuff on. So the last decision I "have to" make is whether to try to catch a swarm come early next season, or just commit to buying some bees. In any event, I need to take down the bait hives soon, and get rid of the earwigs, ants, and whatever else decided to move in, before I have neither usable wax/comb/or woodenware left. Time for a good coat of paint, and some inventory, and depending on what plan I actually end up with, build whatever equipment will be necessary to effect that plan. 5F nucs 2F nucs, more boxes or supers, feeders, escapes, frames and/or whatever all else. Depending on the plan, I will need different things. 

What I have decided is that I will be staying with Langstroth equipment. So if nothing else I will be building some frames. 
I also know that if I don't split then I likely won't make it through to following spring. And likewise if I am only able to do a single split. 
If I can do multiple splits so much the better, but in any event I will need some kind of NUCs be it 2 or 5 or 4 or 3. And I am not sure if I can get NUCs through the winter, so I may need to get whatever gets split into full size boxes. At least to single chamber. 
I am also guessing that I won't be able to depend on the flow so I will be feeding. So I will need multiple feeders. One other option is to try and make bees, at least enough that I could actually buy queens to effect splits, but I am not sure how I am feeling about that at this point either. 
I also know that I really need to get started early in the season. The one fellow that was relatively local to me, whose nuc's I was thinking I liked, when I looked back at my notes, was the one that ended up putting me off multiple times until it was pretty-near mid may before I was able to get it last time. I think I will be looking for a better source for next time. See if I can find a source that make sense. 

So other than repairing equipment, and building new stuff and rearranging my bee-yard layout, coming up with swarm trapping ideas there is very little hands-on I can do. I have figured out a few things that I did wrong, and how to fix them going forward. Other than that, I guess I just have annoying questions. But they seem to be the result of reading and watching experts whose motivations I am unsure of. Are they interested in selling books and equipment, or getting likes/follows/shares or are they committed to showing me something that will work somewhere else besides their personal bee yard?


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



Absinthe said:


> ........ Are they interested in selling books and equipment, or getting likes/follows/shares or are they committed to showing me something that will work somewhere else besides their personal bee yard?


Selling shovels to the gold-diggers was historically a successful business model.

Still, there are few honest BS members right here who do not sell books or the like - and yet they keep the bees quite successfully.
But the particular context of each and every case is important.

Speaking of "too late"..
In late August of 2016, I took a small swarm off a branch.
These ones (look at the conditions): 







Hived them into a plywood trap hive and fed them straight sugar ('cause I had nothing else).
They overwintered OK.
And so the show went on ..


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



Absinthe said:


> . This original hive, now queenless should start to make queen cells from very early larva because they exist? Or they will make it from any of the 1-3 day-olds they find without differentiation?


they preferentially chose older larva, and older larva makes poor queens..


> The queen cells were initiated around brood aged between 3 and 11 days; the average ageof brood used to initiate queen cells was 5.9 ± 1.90 days (N = 131; Fig. 2A).
> Eggs were never observed inside queen cells. Queen cells from which queens emerged and those destroyed
> either before or after capping did not differ in the age of brood from which they were constructed (Mann-Whitney test: U = 1732, N1 =52, N2 = 79, P = 0.123; Fig. 2A). Most of the queen cells (60.3%) were destroyed, 17.6% of them before capping and 42.7% after capping (Fig. 2C). The queen cells were destroyed between the 5th and 18th days of brood development, and the average age of brood at the time of queen cell destruction was 13.0 ± 3.48 days


Tofilski, Czekonska (2004) 

but we see they tear down a lot of cells, and tarpy etal(1999) shows they tear down inferior cells leaving the better ones. https://www.researchgate.net/public..._and_the_resultant_variation_in_queen_quality

So when you deequeen a hive and break it in to small nucs they don't have the volume of cells to chose form and are stuck with the hand you dealt them and don't chew down, leaving a lot of poor qualty queens, and a few good ones...


Some work has bee done on the reverse, break them in to small walk away splits. 
The thought is they make more cells per split this way and then chew down to improve quality. Sam Comfort has gotten some impressive results doing this







but it sounds like it may be a little hit or miss. 

UMASS is running a study right now, testing small walk away splits ( 2 frames of brood (including eggs), 1 frame of food (nectar and pollen) and a shake of bees into a nuc ) VS placing a 48 hour cells and 10 day cells in nuc set up the same (100 of each treatment) and sending a smaple of the resulting queens to the Tarpy lab for quality scoring while the rest are evaluated on field performance. 

the results should be informative as to what is the best practice for the small scale beekeeper. 
https://projects.sare.org/project-reports/one19-326/


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

Sorry guys, we got a bit off topic. I moved the swarm trap discussion to a new thread in the appropriate sub-forum. https://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?362183-Swarm-trapping-and-traps


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## Absinthe (Feb 26, 2016)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



JWPalmer said:


> Sorry guys, we got a bit off topic. I moved the swarm trap discussion to a new thread in the appropriate sub-forum.


Thanks for the redirection!


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

msl;

I have seen some cells torn down but never documented as to their time of capping to see if they did indeed tear down some apparently started on older larvae. Snelgrove felt that older bees were more prone to start cells on older larvae than would a younger group of bees. Initially I started checking on day 4 after separation to discard any cells capped at that time but was not finding them so now dont bother.

Perhaps it is a factor of doing a previous sort with excluder and shaken brood comb above requiring nurse bees to come up to the brood comb for a number of hours (and in his first experiments I believe 2 days) before placing that box above the double screen isolation board.

This might give the nod to better queen quality than a brute force and awkwardness walk away emergency instigation. It would take a fair bit of doing to substantiate the difference in resulting quality.

I guess that if a person is not otherwise doing much in the way of selection, it does not make much difference.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



> Initially I started checking on day 4 after separation to discard any cells capped at that time but was not finding them so now dont bother.


there is likly good reasons you wern't finding it.. a dealy in the onset of queen rearing and a longer development time of older larva



> Queen cells were initiated between the 1st and 9th days after dequeening (Fig. 5A). In two of the colonies the first queen cells were observed the day after dequeening, and in the other two colonies the second day after dequeening





> Our data show that both the precapping period and the whole development time of emergency queens increase with the age of brood from which the queens were reared (Fig. 3).
> Thus, estimations of brood age in emergency queen cells based on time of capping (Winston, 1979; Fell and Morse, 1984; Hatch et al., 1999;Schneider and DeGrandi-Hoffman, 2002) cannot be very accurate.





> The total development time of queens reared from brood that was younger at the time of dequeening tended to be shorter than the total development time of queens reared form older brood,


Tofilski, Czekonska (2004)
I forgot to put in the link last post https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/badd/36e35dfaf9316ef85c18738cffecc8d94e05.pdf
its a good read, and suggests we need to change our "understanding" a bit on how things are working.. they confined the queens to a single comb per day for 8 days so they had known age larva to work with


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

_Queen cells were initiated between the 1st and 9th days after dequeening (Fig. 5A). In two of the colonies the first queen cells were observed the day after dequeening, and in the other two colonies the second day after dequeening _

Nine days seems like much longer than reasonbly expected. That would put the time for rearing a caste queen of the least queenliniess at 5+ plus days; I have read of that extreme, but would that ever happen if younger larvae were available?

_Our data show that both the precapping period and the whole development time of emergency queens increase with the age of brood from which the queens were reared (Fig. 3)._

This would seem to negate the value of noting when cells get capped. That flys in the face of accepted practice; I am wondering why this info did not get more traction.

Thus, estimations of brood age in emergency queen cells based on time of capping (Winston, 1979; Fell and Morse, 1984; Hatch et al., 1999;Schneider and DeGrandi-Hoffman, 2002) cannot be very accurate. 

_The total development time of queens reared from brood that was younger at the time of dequeening tended to be shorter than the total development time of queens reared form older brood, _

At least those would tend to be destroyed by the first one out!

Why is there not more hue and cry about what deplorable queens can be created by creating emergency queen rearing? There is much written that the bees know best. What is the genetic advantage to keeping such an apparently deleterious behavior of selecting older larvae when younger is available? In real world conditions is it such a rarity as to make it moot?

I hope to produce a few queens where I can accurately control the selection age, though I cant really say I have had any real duds by basically letting the bees select larvae, albeit in a well populated and supplied conditions.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

I did not realize how complex was the culling process on the cells initiated. If conditions are poor and few cells started, their culling options are limited. Also surprised to see that the average age at selection of the successfully emerged queens was a little more than 3 full days from the egg.

From another thread; that bees can determine from the larvae how multi mated its mother was and how well fed it had been at every step since emergence.

Selecting a larvae at the youngest age and having it fed like a baby sumo wrestler from the get go seems to get the nod for highest achievement potential of the queen.

Thanks


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*



> I did not realize how complex was the culling process on the cells initiated If conditions are poor and few cells started, their culling options are limited.


yep,or if you split it down into nucs and limit thier options
here is a little more on the culling 
"_We ﬁnd that queen cells accessible to workers produce larger adult queens (as measured by thorax width) than from queen cells from which workers are experimentally excluded. These results indicate that adult workers may be ‘‘weeding out’’lower quality queens.Although the precise mechanism by which queen qualityis assessed by workers is not known, the end result of this additional social ﬁlter on colony investment in new queens may be expected to maximize colony-level ﬁtness. Previous work has found that higher quality queens tend to be larger(i.e., higher wet mass, larger thorax and spermatheca),resulting in an increased likelihood to win ﬁghts with other queens, mate with an increased number of males (Tarpy et al.2011), and head colonies that are more productive (Rangelet al. 2013). Thus, preferentially rearing larger queens to adulthood selects for queens of higher reproductive poten-tial"_ Tarpy Et al 2015 of note the is the corect study, not the 1999 i listed earlyer 
https://www.researchgate.net/public...controlling_which_queens_survive_to_adulthood



> Selecting a larvae at the youngest age and having it fed like a baby sumo wrestler from the get go seems to get the nod for highest achievement potential of the queen.


yes and WU ET AL 2018 found that the bees fed the cell cups to the same level, wider cellcups held more food and to led bigger, heaver queens with more ovaries, and more vitellogenin in the ovaries








of note they also found restricting a queens egg laying and then leting her lay led to bigger, heaver eggs that made better queens. 

When a hive swarms they restrict the egg laying and use bigger cups compared to e cells... So we see another way grafting may ( using big cups and a breeder queen kept in a small hive to restrict her egg laying) emulate swarm conditions.




crofter said:


> Why is there not more hue and cry about what deplorable queens can be created by creating emergency queen rearing? There is much written that the bees know best.


there is plenty
It all depends on were you get your "news" from so to speak... internet popular isn't allways right

Telling people that the commercial/Big Ag ways and queens suck and they can easily make better with a simple split sells well with the masses.

Telling them its going to take hard work and a lot of sweat equity.... not so much..

all that being said.. yes E Queens can work, especially if you go "by the box" and the need to do so by BYBKs that came threw winter with a hive or 2 is a reality!!
But when your numbers get a bit higher you will beneficent from more advanced techniques to yeald a better product


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## Absinthe (Feb 26, 2016)

*Re: Does dong a bunch of walk away Nuc splits count as queen rearing?*

so how long can they keep her in that "swarm state of mind" before "bad" things happen?


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