# Loose techniques in queen rearing



## Bees of SC (Apr 12, 2013)

I leave the virgins unmarked until mated, JMO. The queen can fly faster,higher and may not bee seen by birds.. They get mated better.


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

asd said:


> I hope I make myself understood  I mean you don't have a lot of time to spent and you take some chances. How do you guys do it?
> 
> 1. Unite 2 mating nucs(one suspect queenless) by just removing the divider and after a few hours or the next day put the frames together(it worked in all cases so far)
> 2. Add frames of brood with bees on them(I had a couple of killed queens - next time I'll use some sugar water on them)
> ...


I do not understand what you are asking? can you maybe try to ask one question at the time?


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

1. I've done this quite a bit without any problem. The queenless part has been that way for a couple of weeks by the time I get around to uniting them.
2. I do this all of the time, no sugar water.
3. I do this frequently from brood frames.
4. I usually wait a minute after marking before I put her back.
5. I start looking two weeks after inserting the cell. At three weeks I decide what to do about the queenless nucs (see No. 1 above).
6. I try to mark all of my queens. Superceded queens don't always get done.


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

Thanks.
Marking queens is a tedious job. I managed to mark the last 11 queens yesterday, very hard job in the heat of the day. Funny thing is that I choose a dark blue but it's still quite visible. I don't know why in my case I get queen losses(bee fighting) by adding frames of brood with bees on them although I kept some distance from the nest.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

" I don't know why in my case I get queen losses(bee fighting) by adding frames of brood with bees on them although I kept some distance from the nest."

If you add frames with bees attached then they will killed the foreign queen (original queen) in 
the hive 99.99% because they are thinking that they have an original queen already. They do 
not know that you had moved the frame into another hive. So they fight or balled the
new queen that they found once she stumbled onto their frame territory. And the new
queen scent is different from the original queen too. This is how they are able to protect
themselves against the intruders. A new queen is consider an intruder because of her different
smell. Unless it is a mated queen with a very strong queen scent and a desperate, hopelessly queen less nuc, many bees cannot accept the new queen (original queen) presense.
This is how I killed many of my new virgin and mated queens every year when I was ignorant to this
fact. Now I stop shaking new bees in or putting frame of bees from another hive in. So the new nuc has to be full of bees to account for the drifting of the foragers.
Another experimental technique that I use now is to put the about to hatch cell into a small glass jar with a cap that has holes in it for the queen to hatch out.


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

beepro said:


> " I don't know why in my case I get queen losses(bee fighting) by adding frames of brood with bees on them although I kept some distance from the nest."
> 
> If you add frames with bees attached then they will killed the foreign queen (original queen) in
> the hive 99.99% because they are thinking that they have an original queen already. They do
> ...


I know beekeepers that does this and beedeetee has reported the same. In theory young bees are OK to introduce to any hive. I think spraying some sugar syrup might help. Maybe it wasn't OK to put that frame apart from the existing ones. I don't know.


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## zhiv9 (Aug 3, 2012)

asd said:


> Thanks.
> Marking queens is a tedious job. I managed to mark the last 11 queens yesterday, very hard job in the heat of the day. Funny thing is that I choose a dark blue but it's still quite visible. I don't know why in my case I get queen losses(bee fighting) by adding frames of brood with bees on them although I kept some distance from the nest.


I have never had issues adding brood/bees from another colony. You could try giving the frame half a shake. Most of the older bees and probably the queen if she is on their will fall off and you will be left with mostly nurse bees. They seem to be last to get shaken off.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Interesting Adam - that could be helpful at times.


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## WilliamsHoneyBees (Feb 17, 2010)

Adding bees from one colony to another I shake the bees on top of the brood nest or in front of the colony. The young nurse bees will walk in with no problems and the old foragers will fly back to the original colony. If the original colony or nuc is queenless combining without newspaper to a queen right colony is seldom a problem. The pheromones from the laying queen and brood are strong enough that the bees will accept her. To boost colony population of a smaller colony dropping in a frame of emerging brood works like a charm. Combining bees into a hive with a virgin can be problematic in my opinion, but a good young laying queen is readily accepted. I hope that answered your questions. As for mating nucs, I run a 21 day cycle. Any mating nuc that fails to accept a queen cell or get a mated queen return from her flight is given a frame of brood and another queen cell. If the mating nuc raised their own queen cells and rejected mine I locate the virgin and kill her before adding in a new ripe queen cell.


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

beepro said:


> If you add frames with bees attached then they will killed the foreign queen (original queen) in
> the hive 99.99% because they are thinking that they have an original queen already.


I would say that in my experience 99.99% of the time that isn't true. I add frames of bees and brood to my over wintered nucs and weak hives weekly in the spring and fall and have never lost a queen that I was aware of.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Well, the only way to find out is to do your own little bee experiments like I did every
year. My goal is to see how many virgins got mated and the drones in the surrounding
area.
It is good that you are able to add bees without any issue. I also found that
adding bees in the early Spring build up and the Fall prepping for the up coming
winter is not an issue either. In the early Spring is when I raised a few batches of queens into
the late summer. Then in the early Fall I also raised a few nice queens. What I found out
was that during the mid-summer is when they killed the virgins or the mated queens the most.
Maybe it is the summer dearth that they needed to guard their hive resources the most over a 
mated queen. I don't know the answer to this one. Though I raised queen bees all year long here into
the late Fall flow. The bottom line is summer is hard while the early Spring and Fall are the easiest.


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## marshmasterpat (Jun 26, 2013)

beepro said:


> " I don't know why in my case I get queen losses(bee fighting) by adding frames of brood with bees on them although I kept some distance from the nest."
> 
> If you add frames with bees attached then they will killed the foreign queen (original queen) in
> the hive 99.99% because they are thinking that they have an original queen already. They do
> ...


Would have been nice to have known this up to about 2 weeks ago. BUT Darn sure I will remember it. This helps explain why several weaker nucs that suddenly went queenless when I tried to strengthen them with donor frame of brood and nurse bees.


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

I said earlier that I shook a suspect queenless nuc on another hive cover. The result was another queen inside the host hive 
I found her yesterday by accident, caught, mark and put inside a new nuc to see whether she is mated or not(though it looks like so). What's interesting that hive was a bit aggressive.

I could conclude that having nucs with virgin queens in the same yard may lead to surprises sometimes. I also had another situation like this this year: noticed an unusual beard on a queenright hive - just another virgin trying to get in and balled.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

When adding frames of bees to another hive, I follow a couple of rules.
1. Never add more frames of bees to a hive than what that hive already has. In other words, try to add less frames of bees than what is already there. Adding too many to a weak hive can result in queen loss.
2. When pulling frames with bees to add to a hive, put them into a nuc and set it off to the side somewhere for 20 minutes to an hour before adding them to the other hive. This gives them enough time to know for sure they are queenless but does not give them enough time to start queens of their own. It also gives a little time for some of the older bees to fly back home before they get added to the weaker hive. This makes them accept the new queen in the hive you are adding them to more readily.


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## Bees of SC (Apr 12, 2013)

Beepro @ Ray,,Thank You, now I understand...


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

another solution and in my opinion the only one si to cage her. add frames of brood, with bees, but cage the original queen. they will eat her out in 2-3 days and she will be accepted by all bees. another method is sugar water. that works too. another option is to buy a deodorant that has no alcohol in it, you can find them in the flower power shops  eco friendly but stinky so before adding the frames, use the deodorant in the hive, that will cancel the smell of the queen, the hive, and will make everything neutral. it will give the bees time to adapt. since everything in the bee world is ruled by pheromones, at that particular instant, and until they ventilate the hive out and the queen starts putting out pheromone, the bees, all bees, will be without a smell so to say. my dad has been doing that for the past 25 years. it works. I don't use it, I like the cage method, but I can find queens with my eyes closed, as to where my dad has thick glasses on, so harder for him to spot her. 


my other rule of thumb is the 3 minute rule. it takes me a whole 3 minutes or less to make 1 new nuc, so if fixing the hive, takes me more than 3 min, and adding the risk I have to come back and work on it, I will just cancel it and make a new hive. it will surely work, and I do not have to come back until week 4 to make sure the queen mated. I have canceled 2 hives on sunday, placed them on top of strong hives, with newspaper. I will go back in 2-3 weeks and take them off, and set them up with brood and eggs, and I am sure I will have 2 new queens in there before September. when I get the new queens laying, I will just take a few frame of brood , without bees , and give them that, to boost up numbers. 

there are many methods to work bees, and they all work. you just need to choose one. 

I used to carry a marking pen in my pocket, and mark queens as I found them. after a while I stopped doing that. it takes too much time, and in the heat of summer, all you want is to finish and go home , so out of the 8 marked queens I had 2 years ago, I now have 0. they all re-queened. I will probably mark them this spring, since I will try and split my hives in 3, trying to go up to 100 next year. 
when I do it, I try to let the paint dry on her, before I introduce. never mark a virgin, she is easy pray out there with a mark on her back. wait until she is mated, and laying, maybe 6 weeks. she will be well established, and for you it does not make any difference. 

I always check for mating success in 4 weeks. at that time, the hive that made it, will get a medal and the ones that the queen did not mate, and started laying gets canceled. there is no point in trying to fix it, most of that takes too much time, and success rate is small. I start over, if I really need that hive. you get better chances of success that way and less work. 

at the moment I am doing walk away splits. I also did grafting this year as a challenge to some friends. 
I had 11 hives in January of 2015 and now I have 35. I started with 2 queens in 2 medium supers in april 2013. I could actually go out there and spit again most of them ,and get up to at least 50 hives for winter, but I can't afford the furniture  so I have to wait another year  my wife is not happy that I put so much money into the hives for now 

hives in normal circumstances have no time to be aggressive. they work for a living. they are aggressive when they do not have a queen, because in that case there are more older bees, doing house chores, so they are the ones being more aggressive. usually you have nursing bees in the hive and worker bees flying around looking for food. in a queenless hive, they are home. another reason is when they have lots of brood, they are also home, to help take care of them, so they are more prone to attack. some people just don't smoke enough, that is also a reason, because the bees will have time to organize, thru release of pheromone , and defend their home. robbing, Is a special circumstance, and it is caused by lack of food at the end of the season, again because you have all those worker bees, that had a job collecting nectar, and now they are unemployed and just roaming around the social security office trying to score a check  they will rob and sell their wings for a fix of that nectar  

I never shake extra bees in queen right hives. I never did that. in 25 years, not once that went thru mi mind as an option. I will do it when I make new nucs, or mating nucs, or started hives, but never on a queen right hive. it is a bad idea from conception, and I do not think it helps. better give it 1 frame of hatching brood, and in 24 h you just boosted them up by a few thousand bees, that will not kill the queen. that's my take on it. 

Radu


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