# Early queen rearing



## BEES4U (Oct 10, 2007)

Three of your limiting factors will be the availability of mature drones, warm weather and calm winds.
Good luck,


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Are those queens offered in mid may mated or virgin?
From what I have learned you watch for the drones to emerge as the starting gun for rearing queens. The drones will be mature and in population enough for mating flights if you start rearing the queens when you first see drones (16 day delay or so)

I am not sure if you could not push this a little bit and start rearing queens at the first appearance of drone eggs, drone larva, caped drones or at whatever earlier indicator would be adequate. It has been part of my extended list of Hmmmm I wonder. At any rate it is useless to rear queens before they can mate.

I woudl also think it is far more reliable to use some indicator from nature, such as the emergence of drones as the indication than to set a day on the calendar. Of course I also tend to practice with no concern for the product to fail do to being the wrong timing. In my style I woudl rear queens as soon as I thought I could allowing those that have no drones to mate with to fail. Keeping up a continuous weekly production of queens until I get the first ones that are able to mate. I would do this for no other reason than to increase my skill at rearing the queens, managing the various nucs, etc. I do not want a lot of first timer mistakes effecting the raring of a queen that will build my next colony. Many of those mistakes will be worked out on queens that are destined to go into a bottle of alcohol anyway.


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## Specialkayme (Sep 4, 2005)

The earliest you can start rearing is when you have capped drones in the "purple eyed stage." this means if you pull a drone out of it's capped cell, and the larvae is formed (i.e. looks like a drone and not so much a larvae), but is still white, and it's eyes are purple instead of black, you can go ahead and graft.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

Read Taber's writings on the topic and you will find that drones are reared any time pollen is abundant in the hive. Not pollen substitute. Not pollen supplement. Pure pollen as collected by bees. If you start feeding pollen by the 15th of February, you can have drones ready for mating by the 1st of April. This presumes 10 days to first drone eggs laid, 25 days for drones to emerge, and 10 more days for them to reach sexual maturity. It is not easily done, but it can be done.

I have read of northern queen breeders ordering packages of bees with a high population of drones. With a bit of manipulation, you can produce queens timed to emerge at the same time the drones arrive and be ready to mate about 7 days later. The drones will be flying freely by then. You will need a flying population of about 50 drones for each queen to be mated.

One huge caveat, no matter how many queens and drones you have, if the weather is too cold, no mating will take place.

Taber also had a bit to say about colony diapause which is the abrupt shutdown of brood rearing in mid to late November. The bees have to be rearing brood and have lots of emerging brood before they will raise good queens. This applies regardless of time of year.

DarJones


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

You are pretty much in my climate. I've tried raising early queens. I think it's a waste of effort. If you wait they will be easier to raise, be of higher quality and well get better mated. The first of May is pushing it some years but some years works well enough. Mid May seems to work well. From then until a dearth it's not so hard.


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## Ted Kretschmann (Feb 2, 2011)

We start grafting around February 25. We generally have drones in good numbers around the 8th of March. But then we have Tag Alder, Henbit, Maple blooming from January through the early graft period. We also have quite a few drones that now overwinter in clusters. TED


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## DRAKOS (Oct 17, 2011)

I am wondering, if the second year drones, that have overwintered in a cluster, are so good for mating, as the new year's drones. 
Does anyone know?


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## wheeler88 (Mar 6, 2011)

Would it be a good idea to use those plastic drone frames in a hive to maybe get more drones. I know they are used mainly for varroa traps.


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## Specialkayme (Sep 4, 2005)

Most queen breeders use those frames for drone production.

I just cut down two of them to be used in mediums. It yielded four drone frames.


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## wheeler88 (Mar 6, 2011)

Thanks for the info SpecialKayme, I was just thinking about using them as I was reading this post, maybe I will try a couple of them this coming spring.......


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## fish_stix (May 17, 2009)

Why not natural drone comb? Just hang a medium frame in a deep hive. The bees will build comb hanging down from the bottom bar and it will be 90-100% drone comb. For varroa control just scrape it off with your hive tool and melt it down. They'll quickly build it out again.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Those drone frames are about 6.6mm. natural drone comb tends to be smaller. Smaller drones are faster and have more stamina. I'd use natural drone comb instead.


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## wheeler88 (Mar 6, 2011)

Nature drone comb sounds like a good idea to me, thanks for the info.....................


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## johns bees (Jan 25, 2009)

Drakos, what are second year drones ?
I was taught that the workers push out all the drones before they go into cluster so every year there is a new batch of drones born ..and so on through the year But who knows I could have been taught wrong.


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## Steve10 (Nov 19, 2008)

Michael Bush said:


> Smaller drones are faster and have more stamina.


But slow, fat bees drones are happier and live longer because they can't catch those queens! Haha (Sorry, couldn't resist!)


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Two thoughts...

When do your bees raise queen cells? One of the biggest considerations in queen rearing is available resources. The bees can't and usually won't attempt to raise queen cells until the nectar/pollen resources are abundantly available. I think it a mistake to raise queens under adverse conditions. You may get a queen but chances are, quality will suffer.

If you need early queens, before the optimum resources are available, raise them the summer before at a time the bees can raise quality mammas and winter them over in nucleus colonies.


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## DRAKOS (Oct 17, 2011)

Ted Kretschmann;729510 We also have quite a few drones that now overwinter in clusters. TED[/QUOTE said:


> We also here in Greece have a few drones , that overwinter


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## oldreliable (Jan 29, 2011)

I have some drones in my hives..not many but they are not being pushed out anymore that I can tell..I say this because I sit and observe my hives alot and yesterday in doing so I notice a frew drones over a hours time come and go....something else I do is srpinkle some pollen pulverized pollen on their door step..bees take it in and store it away....happy bees


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

I'm wondering if the presence of drones in hives late into the year here in the North and all winter other places is because the colony needs those drones because queens might not last. Drone presence late in the season or all wintert means that things are wrong in the hive.

I mentioned this Theory to David Hackenberg a week and a half ago and he thought it made sense.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

sqkcrk said:


> Drone presence late in the season or all wintert means that things are wrong in the hive.


Not necessarily so. I have plenty of good strong colonies that winter over drones. I mostly see dark drones wintering, but talking to Latshaw about it, he tells me he has Italins bees wintering drones. We are both in agreement that this seemingly didn't used to happen.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

So, why do you suppose it is happening now? When did it start happening? After CCD? Before?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I noticed it as soon as I started keeping the feral survivors. They seem to overwinter some drones.
The commercial Italians never did that I noticed.


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## standman (Mar 14, 2008)

A fellow beekeeper saw drones in my hives last winter, and said that only happened in hives with plenty of stores. Can anyone confirm that?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Well, low stores will incite them to throw out drones, so in a round about way, that may be true.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

I deliberately select colonies for queen rearing that overwinter a few drones. The drones seem to go with being a large healthy colony. It gives me the advantage of being able to start a few queen cells very early in the spring.

DarJones


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

sqkcrk said:


> So, why do you suppose it is happening now? When did it start happening? After CCD? Before?


Well, before. I noticed when my bees darkened.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Interesting. What's the corrolation I wonder.


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

my three deeps almost allways have drones over the winter, never see any in my 2 deeps, so I assumed it was due to the extra food left on the hives, last year was a tough winter and I admit I really didn't look to see if any were over wintering.


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