# Market for Year-Old Queens?



## alpha6 (May 12, 2008)

Ummmm...no.:scratch:


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## JohnK and Sheri (Nov 28, 2004)

You'd have to be quite the salesman....stress they are "proven", (not used up)...experienced (not old), ummm, maybe if you offered a money back guarantee.
Sheri


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## Tom G. Laury (May 24, 2008)

Or just said nothing at all!


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## DRUR (May 24, 2009)

Yes you have to market it correctly, I have always heard that for the older girls its the experience that counts. Now, also you might sell them as 'experienced girls' who survived the destructor.:lpf::banana:


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## MedDoc2B (Aug 5, 2008)

If your price is reasonable for a year old Queen I dont see why some people wouldnt invest. I'm getting the impression that a good percentage of beekeepers replace their queens after a year anyhow... that would make her 2 years old before the lights go out. Basically, i think it's do-able!


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

The average time a queen lasts before she is superseded in one of my honey production colonies is only 14 to 16 months. What would you pay for a queen that you knew was only going to last 2 months ?


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## Beeslave (Feb 6, 2009)

When I was taking bees to FL and making increases, mid Feb. all queens were caught, bad ones killed and good ones caged. Found a guy to buy them the first year for $5.00 each. He bought all he could(200+) the next 3 yrs.


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## Grant (Jun 12, 2004)

I get quite a number of calls from guys with one or two hives who have an immediate need to buy a queen. 99% of these guys don't use the Internet, have never read ABJ or BC, care little about honey production, but they know they need a queen and they need it immediately. 

They're also quite "frugal" and not excited about the prospect of having to invest any more than absolutelyl necessary to keep their hives going. Every spring they want to know if I'm ordering any packages to replace their winter deadouts.

I have no qualms about selling them an older queen (they care very little about longevity and almost always encourage supersedure and swarming to replace aging queens). 

I'll pull the older queens from one of my hives and charge $5 for my time. But for anyone serious about beekeeping and honey production...well, my reputation and my desire for their success is worth more than the low price of an aging queen.


Grant
Jackson, MO


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## Countryboy (Feb 15, 2009)

Any mated queen in early spring can be sold. Nuc producers always need mated queens early in spring. The faster they get a queen started, the further ahead that nuc will be. And if the bees supercede the queen in 2 months, the nuc buyer will have an early nuc, and get a fresh queen too.


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## Adamd (Apr 18, 2009)

There's always someone new to beekeeping who has made a mistake or two and needs a queen - however old.
As long as you are clear of her age, I see no problem.
A local bee keepers association might pass your name around to it's members so they know who to come to in an emergency..


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## JohnK and Sheri (Nov 28, 2004)

Countryboy said:


> Any mated queen in early spring can be sold. Nuc producers always need mated queens early in spring.


As nuc producers, any queen will NOT do. If we bought a queen in spring and found out it was a year old, we would consider that fraud. We advertise, and our customers expect, newly mated spring queens. While some nuc sellers supply over wintered queens, these are mostly late summer mated and wouldn't be considered year old.

That said, yes, we get calls all summer from all over the country from folks needing a queen and I am sure some would not mind if it were a year old. Of course, they wouldn't want to pay for her, either, so why would we waste resources stockpiling old queens hoping for a discounted sale later? 

If an arrangement could be made such as was mentioned by Beeslave, well, that is a win-win situation.
Sheri


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## BEES4U (Oct 10, 2007)

As nuc producers, any queen will NOT do.
Very well stated!

Ernie


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## Paraplegic Racehorse (Jan 25, 2007)

I agree that it really depends on your marketing. It's best if you practice "full disclosure" so nobody cry foul at you. I had been planning on starting something like this in my area, also.

I'd artificially swarm good colonies during the natural swarm impulse (to ensure there are good queen cells in the original hive) and start the swarm in a nuc. My swarm season _begins_ in July, so any swarm thus started really has _just_ enough time to raise a fairly small patch of brood and put up a few frames of stores for winter. If the nuc survives the winter, I can then choose whether to keep it for further breeding or whether to sell it off as a nuc.

The advantage to marketing it as a nuc is: your buyers get a full colony known to have survived one winter, swarmed, and then survived another; it's a "proven" colony. Said colony may decide to supercede that "old" queen (and probably will). If you sell just the queen, your customers will almost universally be disappointed unless your price-point is unprofitably low.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

A late summer or fall mated queen sold the next spring is as much or more valuable to me than a young just laying queen in the spring. She is a proven queen, has only been productive the last few months of the season, and has over wintered her first winter. She'll be very productive her second season, perhaps one of the best in the yard. This is what I would call a proven queen.


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## BEES4U (Oct 10, 2007)

A late summer or fall mated queen sold the next spring 

That's why I am putting candy into my three hole cages, putting the screen in place, stapling the screen and going out to cage out some mated queens later this afternoon. 
I will have about 130 over wintered queens for sale early next spring. They are over wintered in 5 frame nucs.
Regards,
Ernie


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

'Way to go Ernie!


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## Beeslave (Feb 6, 2009)

When running 600 hives how many of the queens during the summer months are superceded or replaced by swarming. When requeening everything in FL mid feb. it is very difficult to get mated queens unless you are buying Aussie queens that have a high failure rate so I used cells after caging good Queens and killing bad.. In trusting the Queen judging of who you are buying "overwintered" queens from(spotty brood killed, chalk brood killed, and behind compared to the good killed) that $5.00 queen will easily lay out $100.00 worth of brood to be used to make nucs using new queens for the northern folk. Yes some will end up being "duds" but with what I have seen with "new" queens there success rate isn't the greatest either(as before the "chemical era"- farmer and beekeeper). Now if you are taking that "overwintered" queen and selling her as "new" that is fraud. Selling her as a "poven brood machine" at a time every one else is asking 4x that, well that's just diversifing your resources. Letting your customer think that "overwintered" queen is going to be what they need for that bumper crop in July- well they will be quite disappointed when it all looked great until before the big flow she fails. As long as the customer knows what they are getting and they use her correctly everyone gains.


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## BEES4U (Oct 10, 2007)

'Way to go Ernie! 
6:34 PM Update:
I just finished up caging out a few mated queens that have been laying a good pattern with sealing and sealed brood. I had checked a nuc 4 days ago and the brood did not look right so I marked the nuc with a rock. Today when I checked the nucs queen and brood pattern I could see the raised brood cells which are very typical of a drone layer!. I caged her out to show another beekeeper. Sunday, August 16, 2009 is the 10th day after grafting and I will cell the nucs in the morning that I caged out this late afternoon.

Now you will like this, the drone layer by all apperance morphologicaly is a queen. She is 50% shorter than the nice large mated queens that I caged out.

Brain teaser:  See if you can come up with the answer?
Regards,
Ernie


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## peletier (May 5, 2007)

BEES4U said:


> A late summer or fall mated queen sold the next spring
> 
> That's why I am putting candy into my three hole cages, putting the screen in place, stapling the screen and going out to cage out some mated queens later this afternoon.
> I will have about 130 over wintered queens for sale early next spring. They are over wintered in 5 frame nucs.
> ...


This is exactly what I am planning on doing and the main point of my original post. It just seemed to me that the queens replaced by overwintered late summer queens -each year- would still be usefull in certain situations. Say I requeen in the spring with a queen mated in August. Next spring I'll be replacing a queen something like 19 months old. That was the second part of my question. Is this 19 month old done for? If I let her go through the honey season and requeen in the fall...she's about 24 months. Yeah, probably really done for then. 

Thanks for the responses...really good information and education here.


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## Beeslave (Feb 6, 2009)

BEES4U said:


> Now you will like this, the drone layer by all apperance morphologicaly is a queen. She is 50% shorter than the nice large mated queens that I caged out.
> 
> Brain teaser:  See if you can come up with the answer?
> Regards,
> Ernie



Intercaste?


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## BEES4U (Oct 10, 2007)

Intercaste?
Well, she has no hair on her thorax and it dark in color.
The nuc bee tore down my cell and raised one of their own.
But, she did not get mated.
Thank you for an answer!
Ernie


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## Countryboy (Feb 15, 2009)

_As long as the customer knows what they are getting and they use her correctly everyone gains. _

Bingo. I'm a firm believer in being honest about what you're selling, and allowing consumers to vote with their pocketbooks.

I know a bee equipment supplier who has built a large business. He sells the cheapest queens he can get. That is what his customers demand - the cheapest queens, not the best quality.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Brother Adam always said a queen does her best work the second year. I agree, just as long as you're honest I see no problem.


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## bleta12 (Feb 28, 2007)

Michael Bush said:


> Brother Adam always said a queen does her best work the second year. I agree, just as long as you're honest I see no problem.


What brother Adam meant is that the queens take time to mature, months. 
He used to keep young queens in matting nucs and overwinter them there so the queens had the time to mature and were confined in time and space and excelled the next spring. Winter serves as the big selector.

Gilman


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## djhiban12 (Dec 6, 2008)

i wouldnt sell them unless the person needs them and you have run out. This is purely for the reason of offering the best possible product to your customers so that they will buy more queens which would make up any loss from not selling the two year old queens


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## Grant (Jun 12, 2004)

djhiban12 said:


> i wouldnt sell them unless the person needs them and you have run out. This is purely for the reason of offering the best possible product to your customers


In the real world, yes. But in this part of the country, people are too cheap or have no other purpose for their bees than to fill a box. These fools know the price of everything but the value of nothing. I made up some nucs and asked $80. They thought the price should be closer to $25. After all, all I did was split some hive, right?

Most days I don't even want to do business with them. I sold a few of them some used boxes for a couple of bucks a few years ago and you'd think I had robbed them blind. Complain, complain, complain.

Grant
Jackson, MO


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