# N.Y. Queen is still laying!



## knute (Mar 10, 2013)

Glad to hear you've got a healthy queen, but I'm not sure I understand your comment "This is good to keep the mites under control..." If there is brood, this gives the mites a chance to multiply, which is the opposite of keeping the mites under control?

I'm closer to the coast from you, but this recent good weather (tomorrow is going to be in the 70's again) has the bees flying strong working eucalyptus (and whatever else they can find in suburban gardens) around here, and bringing in lots of pollen. If there's good temps, and plenty of forage, there's not much reason for a queen to shut down the brood. On the other hand, if your area has no forage in this season, that hive is going to go through a lot of stores if they aren't adapted to shut down when there isn't a flow on; not what I'd want to graft from unless I was building hives for almonds.


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## Montyb (May 27, 2013)

We had a Italian queen top bar last fall that went into winter with 14 brood bars and 15 bars full of honey. We live in upper Michigan and had a verrrry cold snowy winter. Spring came and I found out that they had survived. But they had more bees than they had in the fall the queen never shut down and they went through all the honey. So we did a cut out to a Lang hive, found the queen and gave her away and requeened with a carne queen. We were just giving them a home with no return.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Maybe she thinks spring has already come early? For some reason this Fall my upstate NY mutt queens all shut down brooding earlier than in other years. I think if they were transported to CA, they'd think it was March and get busy.

Enj.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

There is always a big demand for them in the Spring time. The carne mutt queens
I have them also. Majority of the drones out there are carnis here. I keep the Italians to learn about their genetics over many queen generations. So no need to send them away. The Cordovan has a nice blonde to it.
If it hits the 70s tomorrow then my 2 virgins still have a chance to
take their mating flight assuming that there are still some drones out there somewhere. But this is wishful thinking in the valley here at this time.
You see, I'm using Lauri's mite reducing stragety that is to transfer the capped broods that have all the mites in there to another nuc hive. The current queen right hive will be free of mites for overwintering. No need to do any type of treatment in the current queen right hive. This is one strategies out of the many that beekeepers can use to manipulate the hive against the mites. After all the mites have entered the capped broods then the current hive is clean. They don't have big patches of the capped broods for the fat Autumn bees going into winter.
Yes, the mites will not be under control only if you allow the mite infected broods to hatch inside the current hive. But since Pete said he never treat for mites so I am testing this potential breeder queen by adding frame of bees with mites on them. This will surely test their mite resistant ability this winter. At the same time I don't want to overwhelm this colony with mites that they cannot come out of the Spring. By May I should know more about this new queen. The mites are very destructive to a colony during the cold winter months. Can you see why I said they are good to keep the mites under control now? 
So taking some grafts from this queen is good for the added genetic diversity and my little bee experiment that is ongoing. I can always use more bees to make the nucs and queens for my hives expansion here.
As an experiment, I was curious of how the snow country queen will do here in a mild winter climate. Initially I wanted to get some treatment free MI or WI queens but they are not available this late in the Autumn. So NY is the only way to go for now. It just so happens that Pete did not treat his bees there. If this queen survive our winter then I'm going to order more from Pete the coming season. Maybe to add some Russians genetics to my apiary too.


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## jadebees (May 9, 2013)

Some italian bees will starve due to raising late brood if they are in a long winter area. They are a Mediterranean subspecies, and adapted to mild winters. They make year round honey in coastal So. California.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

That is why we use Lauri's sugar bricks and
patty subs so that they will overwinter very well.
No starvation here. They can brood up all winter all they
want. More bees for the early Spring splits. The winter mites, that is another story.


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## valley dog (Aug 14, 2014)

So it's almost spring here in N.Y. how is the queen doing, did she make the winter season?


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

I accidently killed this queen. Made it through our mild
winter fine and started brooding up since early Jan.
She got balled to death in the end.
But it wasn't too late to get a daughter queen from her.
If it wasn't for the red paint on her thorax I thought that her
daughter looked just like her. Same size and same color. Now I
got a second generation almost ready to lay. Yeah, the genetics still lives on!
Need to get more Russian X Italians queens from Pete in N.Y. If you know him do
let me know. He's 10 years tf.


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## valley dog (Aug 14, 2014)

In the early days i marked a very good queen with the wife's nail polish , yeah... that did not work!! She's gone and i don't use polish anymore. But look on the bright side, you won't do that again, and it was only $15.50 on E _ _ _ !! thanks, [email protected]
Pete's Honey Bees up in the mountains, looking in the valleys in NEW YORK!!!


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