# Russell Apiaries SunKist Cordovan Queens



## AmericasBeekeeper

Good strong healthy queen pheremones! I get that when I bring a battery box of queens to the apiary. They will be all over and around it before I can get it set down. My experience is they are accepted better too!


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## BeeBrothersApiary

Joseph Clemens said:


> ...keep them away from the virgins.


How far would you guess about? I have dozens of virgins in a similiar set-up and Sunkist coming tomorrow. The closest to a virgin nuc is about 1/2 a meter, but that sunkist is going into a full blown 2 deep 1 med super colony.


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## Joseph Clemens

After what just happened, I wouldn't install any new queens right next to hives/nucs with virgins in them. It may have been just a coincidence, the virgin may have entered the wrong hive unintentionally, but it is hard to be sure. These SunKist queens sure seem to have strong pheromones, and that may have played a part in the virgin entering that nuc, but it's only speculation on my part, and the SunKist queen appears to have been protected by the bees she is with, even though they've only been together one day before this happened.

I'm anxious to hear Dr. Russell's thoughts about this.


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## Thermwood

How long ago did you guys place your orders for the sunkist queens? I may want some myself.


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## Joseph Clemens

I ordered two SunKist Cordovan queens from Russell Apiaries, the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. The USPS fumbled the first pair of queens, but the replacements arrived the next week and the second delivery went fine.

There are few places that deliver customer service like Russell Apiaries. They treated me like their business relied entirely on my patronage.


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## BeeBrothersApiary

06/02/2011


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## BuffaloBob

It's odd Mr. Clemens, you got the red carpet treatment when ordering Sunkists, while others with paid up orders from January have yet to hear when 
they will get stock. I too look forward to the Sunkist stock, just not so sure I can wait much longer due to the approaching fall.


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## valleyman

BuffaloBob said:


> It's odd Mr. Clemens, you got the red carpet treatment when ordering Sunkists, while others with paid up orders from January have yet to hear when
> they will get stock.


I can't answer for the Russells, however my experience with them has only been great. Have you contacted them to jar their memory about your order? They are very busy, and with any business orders can be misplaced. Have you tried to pm or email Robert Russell himself? Good luck Mr. Bob


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## rrussell6870

It is true that the Sunkist strain can be a bit "alluring" to other strains (not just virgins, but also workers, and of course drones)... they seem to be somewhat like a shiny new toy in the toy box when introduced into yards that have a more simplistic make-up (not calling anyone's bees a bad name btw, just referring to the pheromones that they display being less diverse, causing the Sunkist to appear new and exciting to them)... it can be compared to a fleet of white work trucks, with one red truck in the middle... 

In Sunkist mating yards, the nucs are able to be ran very close to one another in rows of hundreds without incident, but if a cell from any other strain is planted within these rows, the virgin is indeed doomed from the start... so much so that in trials we have observed these virgins being balled in mid flight while leaving the nucs... in my opinion, this is a basic survival of the fittest reaction where the bees sense that they have the queen that they want and thus become overly protective of her and her brood until they have enough of her brood and drones to consider themselves safe if something should happen to her. 

These pheromones are part of the reason why we can get away with caging and planting at the same time, as their cells are accepted so readily that even while the original queen is just being caged, the new cell is able to be planted and the bees will immediately jump on it to begin caring for it.

They also can cause a bit of a commotion in the breeders "personal space" while handling queens and even cells, as clouds of bees will come to care for them no matter how hard you try to cover them up... the good thing about this is that the cloud of bees are not trying to kill the Sunkist or the cells, but rather accepting them and caring for them even before they ever make it to the hive (as Joe pointed out in his observation)... and these are indeed foragers, not nurses, so they are straying from their duties immediately to take care of the queens and cells.

One of the lessons that all of our student workers get to learn is how to start new hives from minimal amounts of bees... each year, when the temp gets right, we let them run studies on mating nuc populations by taking stored comb and different amounts of bees (20, 30, 40, 50) and we set up these nucs with only these bees, drawn empty comb and a Sunkist cell... no feed, doors open, spaced 50+ feet apart... then the students catalog how many bees are remaining after x# of days at different intervals and how long it takes these nucs to build up... after the three frames of the nuc are filled with bees, they are placed in one of our special supers that hold 20 half frames... then the students catalog the expansion rate at different intervals and add more supers as they build up... the learning experience is invaluable in my opinion, as it teaches them what is actually happening in each step of the colony expansion process and give them the confidence that comes from taking 20 bees and a cell and having a booming hive that they can use to stock their nucs with the next spring.

Joe hope you enjoy them and thanks for the kind words. Guys, during my illness, the staff had to make some tough choices about shipping out queens... most all of the orders that had not yet been filled were due to my marking them as vip, which meant that I had to personally approve them... the staff chose to hold off on most of those orders (with a few exceptions) so that they could wait until I was able to approve those queens... this past week, I have felt a bit better and Dr wife has let me take a few short trips to the office and to my private stock yard at home, during which time I caged a few queens and approved a few rows to be caged for vip orders... there is a method to my madness. Lol. I hope to make sure that talented breeders such as Joe, (and several others), get their hands on genetics from our stocks to improve diversity in multiple regions across the nation. This will have a long term impact on our industry, slowly but surely, those small breeder orders will prove helpful... as most of you know, I am all for the "slowly but surely" approach to anything... lol.

Also, I will add that I always recommend installing new sunkists into full hives or splits... this does limit the amount of this overly protective behavior. Most find that they are excepted much more quickly than most other queens. However, the effects of this behavior diminish quite quickly as she lays some brood in the new colony... presumably because of the presence of her pheromones displaced by the Sunkist brood pheromones.


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## Joseph Clemens

Today I had an excellent chance for comparison of Cordovan Italian queens from Russell Apiaries and another large queen breeder.

A customer for my nucs sometimes provides his own queens which he obtains from various commercial suppliers. Last night I picked up from him a pair of Cordovan Italian queens which he recently obtained from one of the larger national queen producers, not Russell Apiaries. In the dark of night, using my red LED headlight I removed the cover from a strong but queenless nuc, placed an empty nuc super on top, then placed the two traditional wooden queen cages on their sides, allowing maximum screen exposure for access by the hive bees to the caged queens -- in effect banking them for the night. This morning, as I retrieved them to install in the customer's nucs I was struck by the fact that though there were a great many queenless bees from the nuc covering the top bars, there were only, at most, three or four bees on the screens of the queen cages, quite a contrast with the Russell Apiaries SunKist Cordovan queens. I had banked the SunKist Cordovan queens overnight, just as I had these queens, but as soon as I set the SunKist cages on their sides the queenless nuc bees had rushed up, nasonoving and covering the screen of the cages -- they were still covered with bees the next morning. Nothing like that had happened with these queens.

Next comparison was when I set the queen cages on top of their respective new nuc homes. These new queens drew absolutely no attention to themselves from any ambient bees (not one single bee alighted on the cages in about twenty minutes while I worked to remove the resident queens and relocate them elsewhere) -- though there are more than thirty nucs crowded together here under one large mesquite tree and even though I had nucs open and was manipulating the two nucs that were soon to be their new homes -- no evidence that any bees even noticed that queens were exposed there.

>> Honestly I have no connection with Russell Apiaries other than I am a recent customer having received some of their SunKist Cordovan queens to try out and to raise some daughters from. This thread is my attempt to communicate some of my experiences with this.

I am discovering there certainly are more possible differences in queens than I had ever thought.


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## the doc

I had a similar experience with the russell queens. I couldn't believe the mass of bees moving up to the top bar all trying to feed through the cage. No balling or aggressive behavior at all - they were only queenless for 20 min!
As a matter of fact the caged attendants/queen were so well cared for by the nucs they stopped eating the queen candy and I had manual release all four of them after four days as they didn't make any progress through the nail hole in the candy! LOL


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## valleyman

They definitley sound like what I need to get my crazy Russians to accept another genetics, or for that matter anyone that has trouble getting queen acceptance in theur hives. What I understand about them is that while Russell Apiaries has better producing genetics than the Sunkist Cordavan, they are probably the gentelist bees that you can keep. It doesn't hurt that they are beautiful and the queens are easy to spot.


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## snapper1d

I have some sunkist on the way right now to add to what I now have.It is going to be interesting to see how these are going to do!!!


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## Joseph Clemens

Okay, I'll confess, I created nucs especially for the SunKist Cordovan queens, so it would be easiest to introduce them and to get them laying A.S.A.P.; two frames of honey/pollen, two frames of emerging bees/nurse bees, one empty comb. Each nuc was in a new location, so any field bees could leave and return to their original locations. Then, I watched the queens carefully as I released them into the nurse bees in their respective nucs (this was the morning after they arrived, the nucs were made up the morning the queens arrived, they spent the night in a queenless colony, now they were being introduced to their new homes). The queen courts quickly formed around them, though they didn't seem to have much interest in the court, they would climb out of the court and move around in the cluster, courts would reform and they would repeat the process, carefully climbing over the court bees to choose their own path through the hive -- perhaps this behavior distributed their Queen Substance more quickly throughout the hive bees, I could only assume it would. It was like they were on a welcome tour of their new home and subjects.

They each behaved nearly the same, and by the second day were starting to lay a little, and by the fifth day were laying strong, as they continue to do. I can hardly wait to graft some daughters from these beautiful ladies.

Since the cell builder nuc I had just assembled a few days before the queens arrivals, was the queenless nuc they spent their first night in, and I used it to introduce one of these new queens, I am going out this afternoon to collect frames of emerging brood to assemble another new cell builder nuc -- then tomorrow morning I am hoping to graft a nice batch of daughter queens, perhaps ten from each, hoping for at least five finished queens from each mother - for my first round.


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## Buffalo Bee Farm

This is not only with the Sunkist Cordov's. I just recieved last week 3 sunkist Cordovs, 3 caucasians, and 4 buckfast from Russell's. 

I made 10 frame, what i call 50/50 splits so they build fast, after only about 2 hours of being queenless and some for only about 30 mins, when i tried to sit the cages on top of the frames in the lower deep, the bees looked like a swarm entering a box, you know how they look like a single wave of bees!!! They were not biting etc, but were tending to her. I had this effect with all 10 of the queens...

I think this goes to show that even though the sunkist may have strong pheromones, that its more of a HIGH QUALITY issue coming from Dr. Russell. I believe he is just producing better queens than some. 

I plan on ordering more possibly this year, but def. next year! 

Keep up the good work and let me know when those AMM's are for sale again...


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## the doc

i had the same experience with both the sunkist cordovans and caucasians as well


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## Joseph Clemens

Okay, I grafted from SKCQ#1 a few days ago. Using a hose, I wet down the ground, tree, bamboo grove, and shade cloth surrounding my nuc yard and grafting area. I hung the hose on a tree branch and directed it to spray a mist up into the air to help cool and humidify my grafting area. I used a nuc box covered with a wet towel to hold the frame of larvae and used a small moist towel to cover the grafts as I made them. I grafted fifteen wide-base JZsBZs plastic cell cups (one bar) and five homemade beeswax cell cups attached to their own bar. From this grafting session I now have ten JZsBZs cells growing, and three beeswax cells growing. Last night I grafted from SKCQ#2, a JZsBZs plastic cell bar (15 cups). This morning I checked and nine cells had been started from SKCQ#2, I re-grafted the other six cups. I'm feeding the SKC nucs and queen cell builder colonies with patties of pollen substitute (a mixture of sucrose, trehalose, canola oil, brewers yeast, and hemp protein powder - moistened with sugar syrup). They seem to be taking it rather well.


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## seal62

This thread has been a great read ...Thanks fellas . Im waiting to pick up my nucs and you guys have my mouth watering ..kid in a candy shop thing . I was window shopping on Russells site last week and i saw the moonbeams where up for order next yr . I just couldnt help myself .. i bought 10 .


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## Joseph Clemens

As happens sometimes, my first two bars of cells in my new queen cell builder nuc were not up to par - I discarded them. Fortunately the three cells that were produced in beeswax cups were fine, and the third bar of cells in JZsBZs wide base plastic cell cups are also coming along fine. Apparently there weren't enough nurse bees in the nuc to do the job to my satisfaction, now it's the better part of a week later and most of the sealed brood has emerged and I've replaced those frames with more frames of sealed/emerging brood. I've re-grafted and hopefully this time they will do the kind of job I will be glad to accept.


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## kenr

I wonder if you could take a screened innercover and put the sunkist queen on top if she would draw the resident queen to the bottom of the screen and all you would have to do is lift the screen and pluck the old queen off.With my eyesight it's almost impossible for me to find the queen.


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## Joseph Clemens

That may possibly work -- if you try it, let us know how it went.


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## valleyman

Joseph. 
What are your expectations from the SKCO's as far as mite resistance, general health, production, wintering, and in general survivability? I know that they are gentle and easy to handle, and that the queens are easy to find.


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## Joseph Clemens

valleyman,
I have only heard very good things about the SunKist Cordovan variety from Russell Apiaries. It has already been very interesting working with a few of these queens, but I haven't grown a single colony from any of them, yet. I haven't even had them long enough for any brood to emerge yet, let alone for mature colony features to become evident. The queens are performing very well, and I am already grafting from them to grow daughter queens.

The daughter queens will be mating with whatever drones in my area are available when the time comes, so that will definitely play a part in how the daughter queens perform - hopefully any local drones will be a positive influence. My experience has been that local drones can be a mixed blessing. Russell Apiaries lists many desirable traits being developed in this variety -- I am hoping that they are at least half as wonderful as they appear to be. Of course, my producing open mated daughters from SKC queens does not promise to be as valuable a product as the mother queens produced by Russell Apiaries. 

So, basically you could call it a "leap of faith", though not completely, as Russell has shown himself to be extremely knowledgeable concerning queens, queen rearing, and beekeeping in general.


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## guyross

I to am new to Sunkist and to beekeeping in general but plan on using drone frames in my eight hives in an attempt to preserve there genetics.


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## Joseph Clemens

I should mention that some of those, "whatever drones in my area are available", include many drones I use my full-size hives to produce, hoping to saturate the area with desirable drones. But presently many of those drones are, of course, from Cordovan drone mothers other than SunKist Cordovan.


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## valleyman

Have you ever considered setting up say 3 drone nucs in a 1 mile radius of your Apiary. If so how does one prevent inbreeding. Oh, by the way the only differience between line breeding and inbreeding is if it works it is line breeding. Go figure,lol.


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## rrussell6870

To ensure the greatest level of apiary health for our customers, we graft from as many as 40 different lineages and plant cells in a rotation... this way each order has as many as 40 different lineages in it... for example, if a customer orders 20 queens, each of those 20 will have come from a separate graft, so when the customer uses these queens in their hives, they will be producing drones from 20 different lineages... so many breeders have gotten away from this practice and the results of failing to do this is inbreeding... imagine someone buying 100 queens, then requeening splits that they move to set up a new yard with... the new yard would now be made up of all sisters and although those sisters will have mated with a mix of drones from the breeders mating yard, they will still only be producing drones from their own genetics, not those of the drones that they had mated with... each egg that the breeder grafted to produce those 100 queens was fertilized by a drone that the original breeder queen had mated with... that is up to 20 drones (but rarely that many)... so in theory there will be as many as 5 sets of genetic mixes within the yard of 100 splits.. it would not take long at all before natural requeening will have created a full sweep of common genetics throughout that apiary... 

In short, Joe has four Sunkist Cordovan queens, each from a separate lineage, and each producing drones from separate lineages... so he can graft from all of them and the daughters of each graft will not be related, and they can mated with a mix of drones (as well as his own of course, which I always recommend for incorporating your own location specific genetics)...


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## David LaFerney

I received 2 of these queens about 10 days ago. When I checked a few days later they had both been released, but I couldn't find either one - which of course made me nervous. Checked again today after being gone for a few, and the first hive I checked I couldn't find any eggs (not proof that there aren't any) or brood, and then I saw the queen - not a cordovan, and not marked.  One of my black tipped Italian style queens that (probably) got lost on her way back from mating. 

The other hive (in another yard) had the right amount of brood of the right age, although I couldn't spot that queen either. Sure did want to though.

One more lesson learned - don't hive valuable new queens right next to mating nucs. OR, the only way to be sure a hive is queenless is to remove a queen from a queenright colony.

Dagnabit.


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## Barry

What? The Russell queen got beaten up by a local?  
Sorry for your losses. Some lessons are hard.


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## David LaFerney

The locals are pretty tough sometimes. Next time I'm gonna be really really careful.


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## Joseph Clemens

Well, the nucs I have the SunKist Cordovan queens in are starting to emerge the workers from these queens, most or even all of them are also Cordovan. Also a few of the queens from the first good batch of cells are emerging -- tomorrow most of that first batch of queens should be out. They are looking very nice. Here's hoping they find some nice, non-AHB drones to mate with.


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## Desert Viking Ranch

I'm hoping things go well for you...namley because I plan on buying a nuc or two of those Sunkist genes from you next spring :thumbsup:


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## Joseph Clemens

Almost all of my regular nucs and my mating nucs are now occupied by virgins that have emerged in the past three days, grown from the SunKist Cordovan queens. Unfortunately our main flow ended a few weeks early (mesquite), so I am feeding a little 1:1 and pollen substitute to help keep the momentum. I suspect the sudden early loss of the honey flow to be why I had to discard three bars of cells that were not up to my standards. But since I began some feeding of the cell builders they have done a much better job. Those queens may have turned out just fine, but I didn't want to take a chance (they had little or no reserve jelly and were much shorter than my usual cells). Though when I pulled those cells down and examined the pupae, they did not look stunted.

I started the SunKist Cordovan queens in deep, 5-frame nucs on five medium frames. They appear to be ready for a second box of medium frames and I plan to move one frame up and replace it with a frame of drone comb to help inspire drone production. I'm always hoping the weather will cooperate and make it possible to raise queens through the Winter, but, so far, that's only happened once since I began raising queens (just a few years now). Usually the bees evict almost all of the drones. Perhaps if I continue some light feeding I can get them to keep more drones. That is what I intend to try.

Our Summer rains have finally arrived and they've reached us this past Tuesday and now Thursday evenings. If we continue to receive rain like this we could have a late Summer wildflower flow, which would be nice. Since we've been at this location (a little more than a decade now), we've had two Winters with enough rain to produce really nice flows that continued into the Spring.

It has been such fun raising queens and nucs these past few years, I certainly wish I had started this phase of my beekeeping experience decades earlier.


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## valleyman

I'm certainly enjoying your posts! Please keep feeding us info. :thumbsup:


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## mhc

valleyman said:


> I'm certainly enjoying your posts! Please keep feeding us info. :thumbsup:


Me Too! keep them coming.


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## Joseph Clemens

Since it's begun to rain and the humidity has increased to average around 30% and it is around 70% right now, at 5:00AM - it has been better for grafting. I grafted two bars of seven cells each. One from one of the SKMQs, and the other bar from an ordinary queen (I'm planning to remove those larvae and replace with larvae from another SKMQ - double graft, as soon as the royal jelly fills about half of the cell cup base). There is still one bar of ripe cells (five cells) that I am hoping to find homes for, the bees just started to remove the wax from their tips, so they'll be emerging soon (I definitely need to, at least, find them a home away from my cell builder).


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## guyross

send one here if you need to get them away My bees were aggressive this morning. All I was doing was adding CD boxes. The third hive got me good. I thinking I had the alarm pheromone going strong by then. I new and have a lot to learn. Hope you and yours are doing well.


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## Desert Viking Ranch

My split of my BeeWeaver hive is going ok - at least the old queen in her new home is doing ok. The queenless hive is still putzing along, made a few more queen cells but the original one still hasn't emerged. I may just decide forget it and try introducing one of your queens JC. Email me when they are ready and I'll see what I can do, maybe I'll get a couple as I don't really expect any honey this year I may split again to get ready for next year


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## Joseph Clemens

Here are pics of two of the Russell Apiaries SunKist Cordovan queens:


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## sqkcrk

They look just like the one I got from Robert. Aren't they beauties? I hope looks indicate something good. That beauty is not just skin deep. I'm looking forward to seeing how mine does.


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## rrussell6870

Nice to see you guys are enjoying the ladies. Lol. My sister "the queen bee" glenda (lol) fell in love with the cordovan color many years ago when my father first decided to try to work the color into the Sunkist lines... she tears up still (remembering the good ol days when my father was around) when she sees them... 

The original intent was to add the coloration to just the grafting stocks, so that the queens would be the only ones with the bright color... making them much easier to spot in a overly packed hive of sunkists... but it wasn't long before we decided to just start a cordovan colored Sunkist line all on its own...


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## Joseph Clemens

Well, of the group of eight cells I grafted in order to have cups full of royal jelly to do double-grafts with, four had reached the point where the JZsBZs cell cups were full of royal jelly (the other four were aborted), so I removed the larvae from those four cups, added four more empty cups to the bar, split the royal jelly equally among the eight cups, then grafted fresh young larvae into each cup. Now, it's two days later and the bees have accepted four of the eight grafts, and they've removed nearly all of the royal jelly from all of the cups (all of it from the aborted cups), and the four accepted larvae are floating in very tiny beds of royal jelly that I expect will grow deeper as the larvae grow, as is usual - we will see. Next time I will simply pluck out the resident larvae and graft in a new, younger larvae, without disturbing the bed of royal jelly, that might make a difference in how the bees deal with the royal jelly, maybe if it's layers are undisturbed the bees won't feel the need to remove it.


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## Joseph Clemens

I've also been busy feeding frames of drone comb into the heart of the SunKist Cordovan (SKC) nucs, at least one from each SKC nuc has been laid-up, as soon as they're laid I've been moving them to strong hives to be grown out (I can hardly wait to see all those golden yellow drones). I've been replacing each laid-up frame with another frame of drone comb, once these are laid-up and moved to strong hives I will replace them with combs that only have about 1/3 drone cells, then let each nuc raise some of their own drones. Already about one third of the workers are from the new queens, beautiful Cordovan workers, soon most of those nucs will be entirely Cordovan.

The SKC nucs are certainly growing quickly, I've been feeding most of my nucs and hives a little pollen substitute, including the SKC nucs. I've grafted a few queens from each SKC nuc, harvested a frame or two, of brood from each SKC nuc, using those to keep brood in other queenless nucs (inhibiting laying workers while queen cells emerge and queens mature, mate and begin laying). The SKC nucs seem to be finding more pollen and nectar forage than many of the other nucs and that is curious, but encouraging. It's curious because none of the SKC workers are old enough to forage, yet. Maybe they'll do even better once the SKC workers get out in the field.


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## David LaFerney

I recently got 2 of these queens from Dr. Russel, and got some pictures of one of them today - plenty of brood, but no adults from her yet.



















As you can see she's a nice big queen, and she mostly just went on laying - although she clearly didn't like the bright sunlight very much. Sorry the pictures aren't better.


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## guyross

amazing how beautiful.


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## sqkcrk

I don't see how they could have been better.

I'm doing a Farmers Mkt at Clarkson University tomorrow. I'm going to take my computer and hope I can get back to this Thread to show people what a queen looks like. Thanks for posting this here. It's great.


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## David LaFerney

Yeah - they look pretty outstanding for store bought queens. I hope this is one business that is left were you don't have to do "Always the Low Price" to stay in the market - although they have some value priced queens too which I bet are also excellent. A friend of mine got a $25 carni that looks extremely big even compared to these beauties. 

Also, Dr Russell absolutely bends over backwards to help us out on here *and* when you buy even just a few queens. 

BTW, you know that you can right click on the pictures and save them on your local computer right? "Save Image as..." then navigate to your desktop or wherever.

I see - you don't see how the pictures could be better - I didn't get a good shot where you could see all of her including the eyes. IE she wouldn't pose to suit me in the bright sun. Although you can see the bust of a Native American really clearly that they marked her with.


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## camero7

I got 2 absolutely beautiful black Carni's from Russell. They are huge and laying well. If they survive the winter, I'll use them for drone production. Got a excellent breeder from VP queens this week. Seems like it's turning into a good queen year.


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## johng

I just received my Sunkist cordovan and some Carneies from Dr. Russell and they are beautiful! Gonna make up my splits in the morn.


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## Joseph Clemens

Here are two photos of daughter queens grown from Russell Apiaries SunKist Cordovan mother queens; one has just emerged (within the past few hours), the other is mated and has just begun laying -->


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## acbz

Alligator queens!


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## Horst

Too good to anschliesend in the almond orchards to spray dead and where is the resistance against viruses and mites ... is the American beekeepers deliver everything? Know what the eco-types?


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## beemaster01

Joseph Clemens said:


> Here are two photos of daughter queens grown from Russell Apiaries SunKist Cordovan mother queens; one has just emerged (within the past few hours), the other is mated and has just begun laying -->


The top queen is not cordovan because she has black on the body. The bottom photo is cordovan as that gene replaces all the black on a bees body with brown. What that says is the mother of these two queens was a cordovan queen mated to non-cordovan drones, thus the black on the body on one of the queens.


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## Joseph Clemens

Don't agree. No "black" on either queen, just photographed under different lighting conditions.

But, you are correct, that would be the case, if there were any black in her exoskeleton. I tried to explain the same to a queen producer I once did business with, but they disagreed with me. They sold me a normal colored Italian queen and tried to get me to accept her as Cordovan.


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## beemaster01

Joseph Clemens said:


> Don't agree. No "black" on either queen, just photographed under different lighting conditions.
> 
> But, you are correct, that would be the case, if there were any black in her exoskeleton. I tried to explain the same to a queen producer I once did business with, but they disagreed with me. They sold me a normal colored Italian queen and tried to get me to accept her as Cordovan.


The eyes and thorax are very dark for a true cordovan. They appear close enough to black to be confused with a normal queen. I have normal queens with the same color eyes and thorax as the one in the picture.


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## Joseph Clemens

You simply need to see her in good light - no mistaking her colors then. It's raining now, I'll take another shot of her in brighter light as soon as it lets up, the photo of the second queen was taken with fill-flash. I should have taken the shots in the same conditions -- I won't make that mistake again. It was poor photography to do that and confuse the defining characteristics of my subjects.


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## Joseph Clemens

Okay, here's the photo redo -->










Bright, overcast lighting doesn't really bring out the color in these queens like automatic flash photography does.


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## spunky

Thanks for posting , Mr Clemens


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## D Semple

Horst said:


> Too good to anschliesend in the almond orchards to spray dead and where is the resistance against viruses and mites ... is the American beekeepers deliver everything? Know what the eco-types?


Verzeihung, ich habe nicht recht verstanden. Was ist das Fragen? 

Don


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## Horst

D Semple said:


> Verzeihung, ich habe nicht recht verstanden. Was ist das Fragen?
> 
> Don



Sorry, this is an automatic translation.
Again this:
Nice bee, but not adapted to ecological conditions.
Is it the honey bee ecotypes in America?


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## D Semple

Horst said:


> Sorry, this is an automatic translation.
> Again this:
> Nice bee, but not adapted to ecological conditions.
> Is it the honey bee ecotypes in America?


Ihre korrekte. Diese biene, wie die meisten in Amerika, ist für nutztiere. Wir haben eine große Gruppe von Menschen, die heute zucht und wir setzen auf wilde bienen. Hoffentlich mehr imker hier werden folgen.


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## Joseph Clemens

Recent batch of Russell Apiaries SunKist Cordovan daughter cells -->


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## rkereid

Joseph Clemens said:


> Recent batch of Russell Apiaries SunKist Cordovan daughter cells -->
> 
> Nice looking cells and look at all that Royal Jelly. Thanks for updating us.


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## kenr

kenr said:


> I wonder if you could take a screened innercover and put the sunkist queen on top if she would draw the resident queen to the bottom of the screen and all you would have to do is lift the screen and pluck the old queen off.With my eyesight it's almost impossible for me to find the queen.


nope didn't work.


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## Ted Kretschmann

Joseph, you always raise some pretty cells. The experience of years shows. New beeks take note and ask many questions! TK


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## Apple Farmer

Joseph,

Do you prime your cell cups with royal jelly before you graft?


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## Joseph Clemens

I have done some dry grafts, but especially in my usually dry climate I get my best takes when I take measures to boost the humidity and lower the ambient temperatures in my nuc yard (where I do most of my grafting) and prime with a very small drop of royal jelly, keeping the cups covered with a damp towel until just before I place them in the cell builder colony.

I recently did a batch of six dry grafts, two of them took, then when those two cups were half full of royal jelly I plucked out the resident larvae and replaced them with fresh, tiny, young larvae, both those larvae were aborted and all the jelly eaten out of those cups.


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## Joseph Clemens

Pic of PF-120 frame with brood and SunKist Cordovan nurse bees -->


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## Beezly

Excellent! Definitely a queen to have. I will order mine soon for the spring. Thanks Joseph!
mike


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## WI-beek

Here is another pic of a sunkists brood pattern


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## valleyman

You guys are making me eat my heart out. I have 3 in hives of which I know 2 are already laying. I have 4 more in nucs of which 2 are laying and is going in their full hive soon. I lost 2 to the bees from Hades. When I released them they were accepted, with no balling or attackting in any way. One laid eggs under her intro cage so they made 3 queen cells out of her eggs and killed her I just ordered 2 more from Russells. I am going to start a new thread about my Russian experience soon. Sorry to the Russian lovers.


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## ginn68

Great posts. Thanks Joe. I plan to make some grafts off of a SKC breeder I placed Tuesday. I still have to nail down my mating nucs. Leaning towards a hive body with dividers to create a three way mating nuc. I plan to use these daughters to head up (drones ) for my SKC mating yard next year. Fun stuff.


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## David LaFerney

Just got into one of my SKC hives this morning, and now that she has been laying for a few weeks she is one of the largest queens I've ever had. She also seems to be producing more brood by at least 1/2 than any of my other queens - for now.

I think her color has got brighter too - she was sure easy to spot.


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## Joseph Clemens

Along with raising SKC daughters to occupy my nucs and mating nucs, I've also been using some of these daughters, raised in mating nucs, to requeen all my full-size hives (I have about fifteen full-size hives). Today I carefully went through each hive and verified that all of them are now successfully headed by SKC daughters. Some have been there long enough for me to verify that many are already producing their own Cordovan drones, and some have, at least a portion of their workers emerging as homozygous for the Cordovan trait. This means that those queens must have encountered some Cordovan drones when on their mating flights, possibly some of my own drones from my earlier Cordovan mother queens. Even though we haven't yet developed a strong secondary flow, these colonies are certainly building very quickly and successfully. Some are even capping honey and lots and lots of brood. Definitely more fecund and stronger layers than any other I can remember - even the few that turned out slightly smaller than the others are still doing a superb job laying eggs.

Another thing I noticed with these SKC daughter queens is how quickly after emergence many of them are completing their mating flights and beginning to lay. Some are beginning to lay about five days after emerging -- I am amazed again.


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## Specialkayme

They are just healthy queens. Healthy queens produce healthy hives, and healthy bees.

I find it fascinating that I can buy a $35 queen from Russell's and have it be as good, if not better than a $300 breeder queen you bought from someone else. Only difference, no II (although very concentrated and selective mating yards).


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## the doc

that is what my medium frame sunkist cordovan look like in the nucs. The last four I got came out laying strong.


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## kenr

I got four SKC queens one died in transit one got balled as soon as she got out of cage.Checked one of the two hives that I had great hopes of Queen being accepted sure enough the top Medium box was filled with brood and a few new SKC workers.I've got one frame with no band of honey or pollen just wall to wall brood.


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## rrussell6870

Glad you guys are enjoying them... just wait till you see what happens in spring...


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## Terry T

Just wanted to post about my experience with some of Mr Russell's queens. I bought 2 I/C queens and 2 sunkist queens.I was really excited about getting these girls going. I put them into strong 5 frame nucs. 1 of the sunkist was superceded immediately. The other is going strong " They have all been in for 1 month now". She has 2 deeps full of bees. The 2 I/C queens are just laying so so. The one thing I noticed as I was placing these queens in their nucs was the lack of attention the other bees seemed to be giving these queens "all but the 1 sunkist which was covered with bees immediately". The other 3 had maybe a dozen bees on them. I thought I was going to have to take another person with me into the beeyard just to help keep all of the bees off me that were going to be attracted to these queens after reading all of the posts about the sunkist line! I am not trying to trash anyone---maybe I just expected to much. Just a little pricey for me for the results. I just recently installed 8 carniolan queens from Honey run apaires. Their cages were all covered with bees before I could lay them down. Will know more in a month about how they are doing.


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## David LaFerney

Terry- I don't know about where you are, but this time of year in my yard the bees are struggling to just feed theirselves, much less a lot of brood. Just saying.


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## Joseph Clemens

It seems like hardly any time since I first received my Russell Apiaries SunKist Cordovan queens. They have built themselves into amazing, multi-super, 5-frame nucs. I have raised many dozens of daughter queens from them, requeened all my full-size hives with these daughter queens. What I have noticed is that most have built up nicely and have nice populations of drones. A new curiosity is how they manage to find the resources to continue building -- I have only fed them a few small patties of pollen substitute. Somehow they find the resources to keep themselves going and growing - it is a mystery. I am ready to feed, as necessary, but so far haven't had to feed much.


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## rrussell6870

Terry, she built up to two deeps full of bees from a five frame nuc in 30 days? That's one brood cycle, so sounds like she is doing pretty well... queens are not superseded immediately, they are either accepted or not. Most cases where they are not accepted are due to the development of a cell already when they are introduced. This would explain the immediate cell(s) that lead one to think its a supersedure, but they are actually emergency cells that were started on the original queens eggs... if they were superseded, they would have accepted her and then replaced her after she had been laying and they found some reason that they felt that she would not be up to par. We replace queens for just about any reason because I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to try the different strains and queens from lineages that have not been inbred or mixed with imported strains by the usda... so if you would like a replacement, all you need to do is let me know.

The Italian/Carniolan strain is a favorite of most because they are a selected cross of three banded Italians and old world Carniolans... they differ from New World Carniolans greatly in there accurate shut down... they are excellent about shutting down when the forage starts to dwindle... this strain is the one that the commercial operations in the north prefer because of their thrifty use of stores, and quick build up when forage becomes available again.

Joe, the Sunkist has a longer foraging range than other strains, only the moonbeams compare... this helps them to find resources when other can not. Good observation... most would not have noticed... your environment can be very unforgiving for a colony that misses its shot at a flow or is just out of range of the next available forage... I look forward to hearing how they do throughout the rest of the year there.


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## Specialkayme

I put most of my hives at an out-yard, but I brought two hives back to my home recently. One is a Sunkist (non-Cordovan) and another is a mutt that I got from Tennessee.

I have noticed that the Sunkist is able to forage and gather much more than the mutt, even though the mutt is an exceptional breed (from what I've seen in the past two years). Another thing I have noticed is that the Sunkist appears to forage much later in the day than the mutt hive. Here, around 6 or 6:30 I can see a "back-up" occurring at the entrance of the mutt hive. It's the majority of the forage force returning, with few of them leaving. The Sunkist hive looks normal at this time. At around 7 or 7:30, the Sunkist hive appears to have the same "back-up" at it's entrance (with sunset around 8 or so). Obviously, the Sunkists are staying out 30-60 minutes longer than the mutts, and I'm assuming they are leaving earlier as well (although I can't confirm this, as I'm not outside that early). Is this natural for your Sunkist line? Or is there some Moonbeam worked into them? Or rather, is the Moonbeam just a select Sunkist line? 

I can only wait to see how those Moonbeams perform next year . . .


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## Virginia Bee

You guys are getting me looking forward to this - Last night I put in an order for 2 nucs last night.

From whaty I am reading, it seems the bees, like the gentleman, prefers these blondes!


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## rrussell6870

Specialkay, part of the characteristics that we select for is the longest foraging hours, so a lot of that is just a sign of that... but they also have a much further foraging distance, which will also cause them to return later as they have traveled farther... these are two of the characteristics that make them so productive... they can continue to grow when others run out of forage, and they can make better use of a flow because they work it longer each clear day... ever have a crop start to bloom a few days and just as the bees are starting to work it well, it starts raining and continues to do so... in cases like this the Sunkist could have covered more of the crop with their higher numbers and at further distance, and have done so for about 2 hours more each day than the others... so when the rain comes in, they are already at an average of 30% further along than others...


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## Desert Viking Ranch

I am really glad I purchased a SKC nuc from Joseph earlier this year, but left one of my Beeweaver colonies the way it was (not entirely by choice). It has given me the chance to compare the different lines.

I can only comment on the Beeweaver & SKC hives from this environment and from a first year beek, but I do notice big differences. Certain strains are better suited for certain environments, probably one of the biggest lessons new beeks should learn. Successful management and equipment styles are also relatively local for the most part. 

The SKC hive was started a couple of months later and I would wager is now almost twice as strong. The queens pattern is solid and she has two full brood boxes laid out very nicely. The Beeweaver hive queen laid fairly solid, a bit sporadic (comparatively) but has attempted to supercede twice (once I split, once I let them) and swarmed successfully (missed the chance to catch them).

I have also noticed more activity later into the evening from the SKC hive, although I wouldn't have realized that they have longer forage ranges - that makes sense now based on my observations of what they bring in, how much and the SKC hive is always first to find something new.

I can't comment on honey production yet since this is their first year, but all other signs point to the SKC so far being much better suited for our sparse environment, where "pickens are slim" most of the year.

Joseph,
The creosote flow here just finished and other than some sporadic yellow and blue-vined wildflowers (I don't know if you have them at your lower elevation - I can send pictures if you like) I don't see much for them to forage on. I am curious as to when/how you observe that a hive needs supplemental feeding? I have feed ready as well, just not sure when to use it. Wintering here will be much different than up north I imagine and I want to be sure they have the proper amount of food stores. Then again, I don't want them thinking food is easy to come by - they need to fend for themselves


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## WI-beek

So far im very happy with my sunkists. They are performing as well as my best queens mostly and packing a little honey and drawing comb when many others are doing nada. Winter will be the true test for me.


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## dixiebeeco

Received my Sunkist Queen early last week and introduced her to the 5 frame nuc. Three days later had full frames of just layed eggs and had to move the nuc into a 10 frame box. Hive is growing super fast and the queens is performing awesome. Just for kicks, the hive is super gentle and never have smoked them.

Hig,


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## Joseph Clemens

About one week ago I filled my largest order yet; consisting of thirty-five mated/laying daughters of the Russell Apiaries SunKist Cordovan queens that I received earlier this year. Today the customer called to tell me that they were all successfully released and are filling their respective colonies/splits with eggs. He also mentioned that when he was installing them the cages were swarmed with bees. I had a similar experience when I first received my mother queens from Russell's Apiaries.

As I harvested those queens I immediately replaced most with ripe queen cells, and as I check now, to see how those are doing, I am having the pleasant experience of seeing, not just virgins, but many that are already mated/laying queens just a week after their cells were placed. I've only seen virgin queens become mated/laying queens as quickly as this since I began raising SunKist Cordovan queens. Not all mature this quickly, but many are doing so. It sounds incredible, I never thought I'd see this, but it is happening.

My hives are also continuing to raise drones, my drone population is still continuing to grow. Hopefully my weather will permit raising queens through the Winter as it did a few years ago.


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## ginn68

Congrats Joseph. That's awesome !

Can you explain what lines you have in your mating yard? Are you running drone frames?

You definitely have it dialed in.

MG


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## David LaFerney

I only got to raise one small batch of SKC daughters this season - but they seem to be very prolific so far. In retrospect I probably quit too soon as I still have plenty of drones and very fine weather.

Anyway, I only got one cordovan queen out of the six queens that I got from that batch - a very small statistical group. How about you?


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## ginn68

David,

Same for me. I was able to raise one quality queen. I allowed her to open mate in my home yard (karnica, mutt's, and Russell carn ). She is building up ok, currently in a single 10 frame med. I have been fighting off the mites at home yard. High mite counts and deformed wings after a migratory guy moved in 100 hives down the road.

I can't wait for spring.

MG


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## BEES4U

ginn68
What method or methods are you using for mite control?
Varroa and or Trachael
Thanks,


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## Joseph Clemens

ginn68,

Many of my combs are foundationless, many of those have sections with drone cells. In order to inspire plenty of drones I simply include a few combs with varying amounts of drone cells into the heart of the brood nest and feed small amounts of pollen substitute with lots of sugar mixed into them.


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## ginn68

BEES4U,

My issue is Varroa based. For that I have been feeding EO mix and started three rounds of Hopguard. I have not treated in any way for the last 5-6 years. So I wanted to use some type of soft treatment. I placed the last round in on Monday. I will measure the effect results in the next week or two. I also only placed the Hopguard in hives above my threshold and had signs of stress (ie deformed wings, aggresive). 

The Russell queens have the genetics to manage/control the mites. The issue was the influx from the migratory move in. 

Thanks!

MG


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## ginn68

Joseph,

I understand. Do you start your frames with starter strips? I have kicked around the idea of foundationless, just need to step out. For now I run plastic mostly. I do have some of my ole faithful shallows that have wax foundation. 

I'm just trying to get a game plan for next year. Some of the items I'm going to try next are: 3 and 4 way mating nucs (Med and Deep), frame rotation ( I do move my frames some, but I want to try to move outside to the in and measure Mite reduction), I will also try to repalce some of my old dark comb frames....just some though...

So I would also like to try starting a couple nucs with foundationless setup. I just need some pointers.

Have a great day!

MG


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## pascopol

Is there any difference in characteristics between Sunkist Cordovan and Sunkist (non cordovan colored) Russel queens besides the color?

If they are very comparable in their merits, then it is worth to pay a few bucks more for golden Sunkist Cordovan for easier task of finding the queen I guess.

Any opinions, or experiences?


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## Joseph Clemens

ginn68,

I use starter strips in a few frames, but mostly I use comb guides. I also use many PF-120 frames from Mann Lake.

Though many foundationless frames are 100% worker cell, many also have various amounts of drone cells which works quite well when a good population of drones are desired.


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## ginn68

Joseph,

Those frames were on my try list for this year. I only ordered ten in black. All in all they are nice, kind of weak, but work good. My only negative on them is all the places for SHB's to hide. 

How big of a starter strip do you run? I assume in a wood wedge frame?

Thanks for all the input!

MG


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## Joseph Clemens

When I use starter strips, I use a piece of foundation that will fit into the top bar groove (where I fasten it with beeswax) and protrude three or four rows of cells.


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## David LaFerney

pascopol said:


> Is there any difference in characteristics between Sunkist Cordovan and Sunkist (non cordovan colored) Russel queens besides the color?
> 
> If they are very comparable in their merits, then it is worth to pay a few bucks more for golden Sunkist Cordovan for easier task of finding the queen I guess.
> 
> Any opinions, or experiences?


Only the color is different. If you are raising queens from her a few dollars isn't much to pay for a feature you like. People who have trouble finding queens might really value it.


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## RiodeLobo

David LaFerney;721713People who have trouble finding queens might really value it.[/QUOTE said:


> Yes we do.


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## Vance G

The color may make it easier but you are still having to deal with the sheer numbers of bees. The bottom line is you must train your eye to find the group of bees around the queen. Their posture and position are a way more dramatic feature than color especially if all the bees are cordovon.


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## David LaFerney

If they were all cordovan that might be true, but with my homegrown open mated cordovan queens few if any of the workers are cordovans - all of the drones are, but it makes them relatively easy to spot.


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## The Bix

I just ordered a pair of SKC queens for this Spring...I am planning to requeen two of my overwintered colonies and raise some queens this year. Lots of good information here. Thanks for starting the thread Joseph and for posting your experiences through the year.


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## Horst

Hello,
You did, beautiful cordovan mongrels Here are my celebrities of F13


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## SERGE

Dr. Russell,
How would you say the Sunkists compare to Moonbeams for working Blueberry plants as far as proboscis length?
Thanks
-Serge


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## Let_it _Bee

I have just ordered 2 Sunkist Cordovians and was wondering how everyone's Sunkists were progressing.


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## Skinner Apiaries

We have some daughters with over 150 lbs of honey over them. The downside, they brood honey up quickly, and eat crazy amounts of syrup, but they are a very nice broody type. If you want to make more bees, she's good for that


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## Let_it _Bee

Thanks for the info, good things to know both upside and downside.


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## sqkcrk

Skinner Apiaries said:


> We have some daughters with over 150 lbs of honey over them.


In NC? Gallberry? Or was some of that from Almonds?


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## SERGE

Skinner Apiaries said:


> We have some daughtflowE]
> 
> Sounds like they are very good honey producers if you can take it away in good time as the flow is slowing down?
> -Serge


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## Justi

Joseph Clemens said:


> I've been wanting to try some Russell Apiaries SunKist Cordovan queens for several years now - use them as mother queens and add their genetics to my yard.
> 
> Well, I finally got it together and ordered a couple. After getting beyond some shortcomings of the USPS, my queens arrived. I had my queen cell building nuc idle of queen cells, but well stocked with frames of emerging brood, honey and pollen. As soon as I could I placed them, still in their queen cages into the waiting nuc where they spent their first night, then the next morning I placed them in their individual nucs made up with nothing but nurse bees and emerging brood.
> 
> I have received many previous small shipments of queens and introduced them to their own hives/nucs -- I only import queens to use for raising daughters and diversifying the gene pool in my own apiary. None of my earlier imported queens demonstrated what I describe in the next paragraph.
> 
> I must report that I immediately noticed some differences with these SunKist Cordovan queens. When I have caged queens that aren't in a hive/nuc there is quite often some interest shown by passing bees. When I have a queen or two in my shirt pocket there are usually three or four bees flying around my pocket, trying to check things out. Sometimes one or two will even enter the pocket for a moment or two. With the SunKist queens, there would be no way to even get the cage into my pocket, because there were always twenty or thirty bees clustered on the screen of the cage and a comet's tail of bees headed for the cage or trying to land on the cage as I move it around. I would quickly run my finger across the cage screen removing the bees clustered there, but there was almost no way to keep the cage clear of bees, they would immediately alight again on the cage and reform a small cluster there. And too, they were not showing hostility, just strong attraction to the queen residing there.
> 
> Presently my nuc yard is set up with stands, eight feet long, and I have six nucs on each stand, set up in pairs, with space between them that I use to rest equipment on as I work the nucs. One nuc with its new SunKist queen was immediately adjacent to a nuc with a resident virgin queen. This morning I was checking this new SunKist queened nuc and discovered on the bottom, near the entrance, the dead body of the virgin from next door, still being balled by the workers in the nuc with the SunKist queen. Apparently the SunKist queen was so irresistible a target that the virgin had to leave her own nuc, enter the nuc next door and challenge her there - fortunately, for me and for the SunKist queen the virgin did not accomplish her goal. Something I will remember from now on, whenever I am introducing new queens -- keep them away from the virgins.


Do you still breed with the sunkist


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## johng

This was a big scam from several years ago.


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## zabadoh

johng said:


> This was a big scam from several years ago.


That’s quite an accusation. You got anything to back that up?


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## Rader Sidetrack

The comment by member _johng_ above is correct. See this earlier thread (but from roughly 12-18 months _after_ this thread):









Robert Russell Apiaries - Update


I wanted to let everyone know some of the information that I discovered while trying to figure out who stole my hives. Robert Russell is running a big scam. He was going by the name Rob hughes on the phone and in person saying that rob hughes was Roberts employee and crew chief. He is very good...




www.beesource.com















Note: the thread I linked is well over *400 posts*!


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