# My plan to a introduce virgin queens of another strain



## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Sounds a good plan to me.

Does Dr Kefuss normally sell virgins like that?


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Thank you Oldtimer. Your opinion is very important for me. 

About your question I don't know for sure if Dr. Kefuss normally sell virgins queens, but I suspect that he does that normally because he has a list with prices for it. 
You can see it in french here https://apiculteur.wordpress.com/2014/03/10/tarifs-2014-rucher-doc-de-toulouse-john-kefuss/ (he sell also queen cells with 2 and ten days, mated queens, and insemination courses). 

I have not had any trouble so far with this buying process. Dr. Kefuss always responded promptly to my e-mails and even accepted without any problem by postponing by a week of my trip to Toulouse to pick those queens.

I'm a little anxious, but I am confident that the acceptance rate wiil be good (about 60-70 % and I would be already very satisfied).


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## pppswing (Dec 19, 2013)

I strongly recommend NOT to buy any genetic material from K.....s.
He has done a lot of buzz about bees that keep themselves so called VSH and so on, the bond test : let live or let die, and so on.

The result is dramatic for beekeeper that have tried those bees.
First, they are not so VSH, his son has lost most of his bees.
Collegues I personnaly know gave a try and were trapped. It took them 2 years to get rid off these ****.
Very agressive, intermissa strain, not really VSH, not able to provide honey.

Mr K. is a theorist beekeeper, beeing an entomology teacher in university of Toulouse and an amateurish beek sponsored by his wealthy wife family.
My advice is to get away from his bees. He doesn't produce honey, he has a great honey line taking dust for years. 
There is a big difference from theory and reality.

Although, this guy is very charismatic and very friendly. Can bee a good friend but a terrible beek, indeed he doesn't make a living with it, it's more a hobby.


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## tanksbees (Jun 16, 2014)

Why would you do all this work, and buy virgin queens? Won't they end up with a lot of the same genetics you already have?

Sounds like a plan that could go very wrong


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

@pppswing 
thank you for your fearless opinion. I have other data that do not support your idea about the quality of Dr. Kefuss' queens. I want to take one clean and first-hand view about the quality of it. After mating these queens will then be transferred to an apiary to 150km away from my main apiaries so they can prove their worth and to prevent genetic pollution if it confirms what you describe.

@tanksbees 
I may be completely wrong, or not, but in my opinion the extra workload will be offset by the fact that virgin queens have more than 2/3 lower cost when compared with the price of mated queens.
Another aspect in which I may be very wrong or not: in my country is a utopia try to maintaining a stable and lasting foreign genetic line without instrumental insemination, because there are zilions of our indigenous bees/drones. I prefer to bet on a hibrid that I can obtain at least 25% of their resistant/tolerant characteristics in future generations. I want to keep as much as possible the characteristics of our native bees with a necessary minimum blood from another strain .


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

3) The nucs will consist of a frame with honey and pollen and a frame with mostly capped brood.
5) These nucs will be in the apiary of the hive mother for most of the old bees return to the hive mother and the nucs stay with mostly young bees; 
6) The nucs of entries will be reduced to a bee space;


#3 & #5. Since many foragers will fly back to the parent hive make sure you add more young nurse bees. This way there should be more bees to tend to the virgin queen. If you take the center frame then there should be more bees attached. 
Other beekeepers shake in an extra frame of young nurse bees too.
#6. With that many bees make sure there is enough ventilation if you put them in the full sun. I open my bee entrance to 2" and everything should be alright.

Make sure you feed them patty and syrup too if they don't have anything to eat. Remember that the foragers will be gone for another 3 weeks or so. The virgin queens need all the feeding to make sure she is strong for her mating flight. So you have to feed them even though there is a flow on now. But no foragers to bring any resource in right now.

Here is what I have done with success so far. No virgin queen got rejected yet. After 24 hours that the virgin queens hatched, I made up my mating nucs. Each slot received 2 frame of bees and a caged virgin queen. All the foragers flew back to the original parent hive. The caged queen was with the bees for another 24 hours before being direct released into the nuc hive. No queen cell started as soon as the bees recognized the caged virgin and that they are queenless now. 
So I don't see why you cannot hold the queens for another day while you make up the mating nucs when you got back from the trip. Just have every nuc perpare ahead of time. Or you can make up the mating nucs one day before you go get your virgin queens. In 24 hours later you can direct release the virgin in the nuc. I have read that after the 3rd days the virgin queen's acceptance level will be lessen. That is why I chose to do it within the 48 hours time frame. Because of the foragers flying back to the parent hive I have to even out the nucs with more young nurse bees. So far so good waiting for the virgins to take their mating flight.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

I myself would not let the nucs sit orphaned for 6 days. I would make them up in the morning, and give the virgins to them that night, or the next morning. I think letting them sit for 6 days queen-less will give more failures than letting them sit just 24 hours to lose their older work force. Other than that, it sounds good.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Thank you beepro and Ray. Wait no more than 24 hours after orphaned to introduce the queens will be considered by me.


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## BeeCurious (Aug 7, 2007)

I would have bought the queen cells.... if not for the road trip!


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

On the 14th in Le Born (small village about 40 km from Toulouse) I had the great pleasure to meet a beekeeper who is now 72, and started with 11 years his beekeeping. His name is John Kefuss (he insists that we treat him for John), is a rare man by his wisdom, simplicity and passion for sharing what he knows and does.

About bees I saw on his farm I can't say anything at this point about their anti-varroa characteristics and production. I can only say I was less than one meter of 10 hives without any kind of protection and I never felt uncomfortable or threatened.

About the introduction process of the virgin queens I decided to follow the suggestion of beepro and Ray and orphanized about 24 hours before the introduction. I introduced the vast majority of the 50 queens that was for me the in closed cage, which I opened about 24 hours later (on 18 and 19th). Next 25th/26th I think it will be a good time to check the egg laying, knowing that the queens were born on the 12th. What do you say?


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

If your timing is correct and according to the nice weather you are having then they should be mated on the 26th, exactly 7 days from released. This should give them enough time to mate. Also, feed them syrup to stimulate the queen and bees to fly. This will help the virgins to go on their mating flights too.
So assuming that they are mated on the 26th, give or take a few days say 3 days later you should see some eggs there. I would say on the 30th or 31st you should inspect them to see which hive has the eggs in it. Or which hive still has a virgin queen not mated yet. It is a long wait and I know you are anxious to see the outcome. But patience will help you in the long run in order for the queens to be mated. If you disturb them too soon then that will interrupt the virgin's mating flight. On purpose I leave my virgins alone so they can mate. For a week I did open their hives to disturb them after the release. The pay off is a big and fat well mated queen!


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## Kamon A. Reynolds (Apr 15, 2012)

In my experience virgin introductions work best closer to 48 hours. Sounds exciting best of luck!


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## Sasha (Feb 22, 2005)

Interesting read:
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00892217/document
I have yesterday released some just emerged virgin queens into my mating nucs. From what I have seen, so far so good. No aggressive behaviour by the bees against the virgins. Results will be seen in 10 days.
I think the younger virgins the better acceptance.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Thank you all, beepro, TBLLC and Sasha. I'll wait about 10 to 12 days after the opening of the cages. As John Kefuss said "slower is faster". 

A few weeks before introducing the Kefuss queens, I bought six virgin queens to a portuguese breeder to try and train procedures. Yesterday I was in this apiary to do varied work and I could see that the 6 that I had introduced, 5 are laying. I may have been that lucky that protects beginners. With the Kefuss' queens, being another "race", the numbers may be completely different.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Good luck! Look forward to hearing how it turns out for you.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Thanks AstroBee! When I have the data on the success rate of introduction I will share them with all of you who helped me so much in this adventure.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Yes that will be interesting. I have never heard of virgins being caged so long before release.


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## pppswing (Dec 19, 2013)

JK is great, very friendly and welcoming but I'm not sure about his bees.

You can put your most docile colonies around your home but what about the others ?
His son has lost most of his colonies (330 out of 400), what about the so called varroa resistance ?

I hope that I am wrong, let us now about this experiment !


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

This is good. After the loss is rebuild time. This is when the
keeper go through the remaining hives to find the most resistant
ones to expand the apiary again. Without going through this collapsing
stage how do we know which one is the most resistant? The virgins also have
to mate with the resistant drones in order for the offsprings to have the most resistant
characteristics also. Without the drones then it will be less of a chance to fight the mites.
He can pick the survivor to expand his program when the other cannot make it. Should be clear
on the next season with this experiment.


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## Sasha (Feb 22, 2005)

Would love if you could open a new thread about your experience with Kefuss stock.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

pppswing and sasha first 'll wait and hope that my bees accept the Kefuss queens. If so I would be happy to open a new thread to go and to publish performance data about these queens in several respects, particularly resistance to varroa of their offspring , their productivity and behavior/propensity to swarm. Thank you for your interest.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

It's not easy to make public a failed project, but because my failure can be teaching others and also because it is likely to get some experience feedback from some of you to correct my mistakes I come to present the data of the success rate of introduction of the queens of John Kefuss. In 49 queens introduced I had 5 queens accepted and laying in early June.

In my first experience with the introduction with iberiensis virgin queens, I had 5 laying from 6.

The process followed was similar in these two experiments. The major difference lies in the fact that in this second experiment with John Kefuss queens, these were of a different strain. Thank you for your opinions about what can I do in the future to improve the process.

A second question relates to what you suggest to rectify the 40+ nucs with 1 to 3 frames of bees, some with laying workers. A first step already taken by me was to introduce a frame with brood and eggs.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Well thanks for getting back about that it is good to have honest reporting although it is academic to me because I would not be allowed to import a Kefuss queen. At least you got 5 laying so still some breeding material if you want to do that.

Re the other nucs, it is possible to introduce queen cells into nucs with laying workers, the bees accept them and the queen can eventually mate and start laying, they do not kill them like they would an introduced mated queen. However by the time the resultant brood is emerging these nucs are usually very weak and need brood and bees added to be viable, or else a comb of brood added at the same time as the cell.

Or, some of them could be carefully combined with your queenright nucs to quickly boost their numbers and turn them into big hives suitable for splitting later. If doing that ensure there are not any old virgins or drone laying queens in them before combining with the good units. Ones with laying workers I combine them off to one side of the box so the bees can gradually move over to where the good queen is, it may be necessary to go back in a week and kill the drone brood by running a hive tool over it.


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## Knisely (Oct 26, 2013)

Eduardo: I just looked at a map, and it might be a 10 hour trip between Toulouse and the north-east corner of Portugal (by car). Do you think that long travel distance (relative to locally sourced queens) might have had any impact on your acceptance rate? Is there any possibility that the virgin queens were too old because they had been warehoused for too long? You mention that Mr. Kefuss had no objection to your delaying your pick-up of your purchase by a week. Also, you state you released these queens after 24-48 hours. That might have still been 'too early' for their acceptance, as faster is sometimes slower.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Depending on how many LW nucs you have one approach you can try is
to introduce a laying queen into an about to emerge frame of
capped broods using a window #8 wire screen wrapped around the frame without
the older workers. The LWs will gradually disappear after the queen starts laying and got accepted. You have to be absolutely sure that the queen got accepted first before
taking off the #8 wire screen. With a laying queen you can combine the LWs nucs (depending on how many nucs you have now) into one standard hive box either 6-10 frames.
The 5 new hives you have you can do a graft to expand your hives. It will take a month but is worth it to see how valuable your newly bought queens are to further evaluate their genetics. It is better to make up some new nucs for these graft cells.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

You had good luck with virgins from one person, bad luck with virgins from a different person. May I ask, do you know the ages of the virgins from each person. Perhaps one person's virgins were only 12-24 hours old and perhaps the other person's virgins were older, like 72+ hours old? The younger the virgin, the easier to introduce, from what I've read in many different places.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

The secret is the mini mating nucs.
Since I have problem with the deep frame of bees balling the
new virgin queens and killing them, I will be experimenting with the
mini's in a week or two. Thanks to Ian and his one cup of bees in the minis.
A fairly strong nuc will kill the virgins while a fairly weak hive will keep her. A local
Russian elder also use the minis with good results. I saw his secrets while on a visit sometime ago.
Sometimes we do all the steps right but the bees are not willing to accept a queen from another strain. It is not
our fault!


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Thank you both Oldtimer and Beepro for your suggestions to rectify the nucs. This project was not all lost because if all goes well with these 5 nucs I can make the collection of data that I want even if I like to work with a larger sample.

Knisely and Ray about the age of the virgin queens: the queens of portuguese breeder born on the 7th of April and were introduced on 12 April. The nucs were prepared on 12 and orphanized for about 3 to 4 hours before placing the queens in open cage with candy; queens from John Kefuss born on 12 May and introduced on May 16 about 1/3 and the other 2/3 on 17 May. The nucs were left orphans about 24, the cages were introduced closed and open about 24 hours after its introduction.

For large differences between these two experiences, in addition to the queens of John Kefuss be another strain, highlight the nucs I prepared for the queens of John Kefuss lost less bees and were more populated that those nucs used for the introduction of virgin iberiensis queens.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

After 3 days is when the virgin turn on her hormones. At
this stage is the real battle to see if she can be the queen or not.
This is also the time that the bees will choose to keep or reject her.
Chances are when they smell something different they will balled her.
So I would cut the release time short by releasing the virgin on the second day after
caging her. Then look for sign of rejection or acceptance of her.
The virgin needs to run around spreading her scent around the hive for
better acceptance after the third day.


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## BeeCurious (Aug 7, 2007)

beepro said:


> After 3 days is when the virgin turn on her hormones.



That statement is contrary to everything else I've read, or been told about virgin queens and their acceptance. Like another member said, it's better if the queen is fresher. A well recognized breeder told me that beyond 48 hours, the virgins begin to become worthless.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

I think reading is good to get the general information about beekeeping. 
But the practical experiences are in your own everyday little beekeeping experiments.
Reading can only get you so far until you decided now is the time to get some
real hands on experience like this one.
I am glad that he share his outcome no matter what is the results for all of us to learn here.
Over the 4 short years of beekeeping I have done many small experiments of my own. Many of
them I did not publish in public. So in the process I had learn a lot about beekeeping and bee
behaviors in general. It is an ongoing experiments that I will do to improve on my beekeeping project. 
Maybe you can do your own little experiment to compare the one day virgin's acceptance rate versus the
after the 3 days release into a weaker nuc hive versus a stronger nuc hive. Your final results maybe different
from mine because of the geographical location and the environment that your bees are in. At lease you will learn the 
many outside influences about your beekeeping location.

I have read and verified that feeding syrup to your little nucs will improve the acceptance rate of the virgin and mated
queens. Because when the bees are happy they are in a better mood to accept other bees. So I make sure to feed them
enough before releasing the queen in there. It is an ongoing feeding until the queen is laying. So I'm not sure if he feed his
nucs too either before or after the release of the virgin.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

Eduardo Gomes said:


> Knisely and Ray about the age of the virgin queens: the queens of portuguese breeder born on the 7th of April and were introduced on 12 April. The nucs were prepared on 12 and orphanized for about 3 to 4 hours before placing the queens in open cage with candy; queens from John Kefuss born on 12 May and introduced on May 16 about 1/3 and the other 2/3 on 17 May. The nucs were left orphans about 24, the cages were introduced closed and open about 24 hours after its introduction..


That is a big difference in orphanized times. 4 hours versus 24 hours. I bet that made a big difference. I do not orphan my nucs when I make them up any longer than about four hours before introducing a queen. I don't orphan them at all when giving cells, or at least, no more than about 20 minutes. I've not introduced virgin queens many times though.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

beepro said:


> So I'm not sure if he feed his nucs too either before or after the release of the virgin.


beepro I haven't feed the nucs before or after the release of the virgins queens. I have put one or two frames with honey in all of them and one frame with mostly capped brood.


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## BeeCurious (Aug 7, 2007)

Eduardo, 

I hope you purchased some of Kefuss's mated queens.

I had contacted Marie and John some years back when I was considering getting some queens for my father in law in Brittany France.


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## dsegrest (May 15, 2014)

beepro said:


> This is good. After the loss is rebuild time. This is when the
> keeper go through the remaining hives to find the most resistant
> ones to expand the apiary again. Without going through this collapsing
> stage how do we know which one is the most resistant? The virgins also have
> ...


Why do you want virgins? 

On another note. What will your apiary(ies) have going on in October. I think that is when my wife and I are coming to Portugal. We have been practicing our European Portugues. I seems a lot more formal than the Brazilian or is that just from the courses we bought?


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

we tried some of his queens in south of france, and they are not so good. you do whatever you want, it is your money. i would not buy his queens , or use them even if he gave them to me for free.





Eduardo Gomes said:


> I'm just under two weeks from an important step for me: go to Toulouse (France ) buy 150 virgin queens from Dr. Kefuss on 14th May.
> 
> My plan involves the following steps:
> 1) On 9th and 10th May I'll prepare nucs that will receive the queens on 15th or 16th (will be orphans for 6 days);
> ...


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

It is the cost of using the virgins versus the mated queens.
Also the virgins will, hopefully help to enhance the resistant traits too.


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## jonathan (Nov 3, 2009)

I get near 100% acceptance with virgin queens by tipping the virgin into a mininnuc such as an Apidea and then adding a scoop of wet bees on top of her. I have done 80 like this over the past 3 weeks and I don't think I have lost many. Most I have checked so far the virgin is present and the first batch has mated. I will be checking to see if more queens are mated in the next few days. I get poor success running in virgins into queenless colonies.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Agreed, a virgin (or cell) plus a cupful of bees that has been queenless 2 hours or more is a virtual certainty they will accept it, very rare to miss.


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## jonathan (Nov 3, 2009)

OT
Mine have usually been queenless no more than 15 minutes.
I lift out a frame, mist it with water, then shake the bees into a bucket.
I repeat with more frames until I get enough bees to fill a few mini nucs. 
I put the virgin in first and immediately dump a scoop of wet bees on top of her before she has time to think about taking flight.
I close up the unit for a day and set it out at the mating site the following evening.
I think the fact that the bees have to groom themselves clean with the virgin queen in the middle of the cluster allows the acceptance. losses at this point are negligible. The virgins I use vary in age from a few hours up to 3 days old but I try and sort them out within 24 hours.


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## jonathan (Nov 3, 2009)

This is the stuff I use for mating queens.
The Apidea.
Made by a Swiss company


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