# Commercial queen survival



## Dave Burrup (Jul 22, 2008)

Last year I bought 15 queens from a queen breeder. When the queens came they looked fine. We got them mid May. They were introduced into 10 production hives and 5 nucs. The queens were released by the workers eating the candy plug. Two were killed upon release. Three or four were superceded within two weeks. The queens that started laying were laying brood patches that looked like winter brood patches. None of the queens were laying patches that would support the hive population. It took the ones not superceded 6 weeks to lay a respectable patch of brood. Except for 3 all had been superceded by July 1. These queens were replaced by our own queens, and they have done well, except for two that were superceded. 
Lets discuss commercial queen survival. I would like to know how the rest of you have faired with your boughten queens. I have been told that what I experienced is not too far off normal, but I have also talked to beekeepers that have had nearly 100% survival. 
Dave


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

Do you know if they were all new queens or ones that were around for awhile?


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## My-smokepole (Apr 14, 2008)

I order more than 20 queens. About 18 were duds
Order 20 from some one else and there seam to be ok


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Of course it will vary from breeder to breeder and year to year.


It's been a long time since I bought production queens, but now you know why I began raising my own. Buy a hundred queens, half are junk. I figured I could do that well...make half junk. At least I wouldn't have to pay for it.


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

Two years ago I got great queens, last years purchased queens were duds and 15 I paid for were never even shipped to me! It seems to be a crap shoot. I am trying a new supplier and will see how that goes. I think I need to figure out how to raise my own. Trouble is, my wintered colonies usually need split before they split themselves!


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## DonShackelford (Jan 17, 2012)

I had some bad luck buying queens last year as well but just to give credit where it is due;

I bought 20 queens from Bob Harvey here on BeeSource last August 1st and they were all great. Big, plump, and almost all were laying on a 4 day check. I did pay the UPS overnight fee because I suspect that multi day transit adversely effects the outcome, especially with the abuse of the Post Office. 
Bob states he doesn't bank queens, so they were in his hives one morning, and in my hives the following afternoon.

I did recently take the plunge and ordered a variety of JzBz gadgets. Probably a lifetime supply for me, but I have a big box of stuff to play with!


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

LOL MP. That makes sense though. You never know what you're going to get and what the bees you introduce them to think something else too.


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## BeeGhost (May 7, 2011)

My first fall I bought 3 queens from a breeder here in CA. I introduced them all to queenless nucs. I found one queen at the entrance dead a few days later but the other two seemed to get accepted. I ended up rolling the second queen and as for the third one, I combined it with the rolled queen hive and probably killed her too as it turned into a drone layer last spring.

I have had better luck letting a nuc make its own queen, as long as I don't kill her!! Cant wait to start rearing my own grafted queens! Although I would really like a Sunkist queen!


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## linn (Nov 19, 2010)

Two summers ago I ordered an Italian queen from California. I accidently killed the hive queen the last week or so in August. The hive queen was in an upper honey super. Shipping cost more than the queen. The Californian Italian queen bee arrived (Fed-X overnight) by noontime. I held off for a week with the Apiguard treatment-as the Californian beekeeper advised. Fortunately, we had an Indian summer and warmer weather extended well into October. That nothern Californian Italian queen saved my hive. I still have the bees.


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## beeman2009 (Aug 23, 2012)

Vance G said:


> I think I need to figure out how to raise my own. Trouble is, my wintered colonies usually need split before they split themselves!


Vance you have the answer, OTS. Mel does just what you said, he splits w/old queen and notches for as many queens as he wants. Sells a lot of nucs as well. Thinks about it.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

on the subject of raising your own queens using mel's notching method, has anyone had experience cutting queen cells free from plastic foundation?


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

Dave Burrup said:


> Three or four were superceded within two weeks. The queens that started laying were laying brood patches that looked like winter brood patches. None of the queens were laying patches that would support the hive population. It took the ones not superceded 6 weeks to lay a respectable patch of brood. Except for 3 all had been superceded by July 1. These queens were replaced by our own queens, and they have done well, except for two that were superceded.
> Lets discuss commercial queen survival.


Last year there were a few suppliers who had trouble with Nosema. These queens would lay terrible brood patterns if any at all and small patches at best. They were pinched off and replaced.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

yep, i beginning to be a firm believer in 'a queen's not proven until her colony proves her'.


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

I raise all my own queen normally but have brought in other queens trying to diversify. I have kept detailed records, all queens are marked etc. I can see why commercial beeks are having to requeen 3 times a year. the first post is about what I would say is average for bought queens from a queen breeder. Out of 10 queens, two will not be accepted, four to five will be superseded, my average would normally be one to two queens making it to the following year. So this past summer I decided to forgo queen breeders and ordered 10 queens from a commercial honey producer. out of 10 queens, two were not accepted, one was killed(my fault, trying to requeen a nasty hive), two swarmed late and went queenless, as of late this fall had 5 out of 10 still marked in the hives, will see how they look in the spring, two have considerable spotting on the hives at this point. These queens were not banked at the breeders location and put in the nucs within hours. I placed all the nucs in one location, also put a nuc started with a queen cell from one of my breeders in the same yard. so my nuc was considerably behind the purchased queens to start, also a brand new yard so not sure how good the yard is. I ended up having to feed the purchased queens, they were fairly gentle, calm, but didn't build up as fast as my bees do, will see how they overwinter and build up in the spring. I consistently have queens that I raise making it to a third year if they are good enough that I don't replace them, have never had a purchased queen make it through the second year without swarming. I always "assumed" that the problem was lack of drones, but a year or so someone posted some pictures on beesource that they took while at a queen breeders site. One thing that impressed me not, was when the breeder held up his batch of queen cells, if it was me I would hold up the best batch I had, what he held up was not impressive at all, less than 2/3 of the cells were capped and not what I would call quality cells. there were some posts recently here of beeks holding up there cells pictures and the quality was far better than provided by the queen breeders.
I realize that there job is to mass produce a product. So I went back through many of the magazines and looked at all the articles about queen breeders and found that the cells they show match the "lower quality" cells seen in the thread. So I would have to conclude that the starters they are using don't have enough of the proper age bees to start and finish the cells. That's why they get supersced so often and don't make it past the first year without swarming. Just my 2 cents, I have 10 queens on order for May 10, so I never do give up trying


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

here is an interesting post on bee-l 
http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2=ind1301&L=BEE-L&F=&S=&P=209359

Shipping can also be hard on queens. I've seen shippers put queen cages 
in plastic bags to keep them from 'getting' loose, or dropping them into an 
unheated truck, or onto a radiator 'to help the bees keep warm'.

You the customer can do something about this last variable. Buy a 
temperature data logger - it can be as cheap as a max/min recorder from Walmart or 
Radio Shack, or as sophisticated as a HOBO or comparable, continuous 
temperature data logger. SEND it to your queen provider, ask that it be 
included in the shipment of the queen(s) to you. When you get the queen(s), 
check to see if the temp ever got very cold or very hot. If so, contact the 
shipper, ask for them to pay for a replacement; and let the queen supplier 
know.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Jerry knows his stuff.


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## Lburou (May 13, 2012)

I purchased only 6 queens last year. Four were superceded within two weeks. I wonder what affect the strong varroa treatments and the deliterious affects on the sperm count of the drones in the hive....Maybe some queens today are poorly mated because of poor drones?


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## Ramona (Apr 26, 2008)

I also wonder about fumagillin.

Ramona


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

I also wonder about small hive beetle treatments in mating nucs


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

At the most recent AHPA convention Jeff Pettis gave the results of a study showing that Amitraz has been shown to have adverse affects on queen viability. I didn't personally hear his talk but was told it was pretty interesting.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Jim I've heard a rumor about that. Do you have a link to a study or anything? If not, I'd like to know what is meant by viability.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Oldtimer said:


> Jim I've heard a rumor about that. Do you have a link to a study or anything? If not, I'd like to know what is meant by viability.


Good questions all OT. I hesitated to make that post as I wasn't able to find any links. Dr. Pettis' presentation was "Long live the Queen? drone Layers and Supercedures". Sorry I am relying on second hand information. Perhaps someone can help me out?


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

hasnt that been found of all the chem mite treatments we are or have been using


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

jim lyon said:


> I hesitated to make that post as I wasn't able to find any links.


And you just KNEW somebody would ask LOL! 

No worries. Just, I use none of the (so called) hard chemicals, except, as a last resort, amitraz. My reason for that is it is not residual it breaks down and does not stay as a permanent residue unlike the others. 

However I heard, but from an unreliable source, that it can affect queens. I would like to know if there is any truth to this, and if so is it larval, adult, drones, or what, and is it just when the strips are in, or whatever else may be useful.

Like you I've searched this but not clever enough to find anything authoritative. DeKnow perhaps?


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

I would guess the affects might be pretty subtle but with all the complaints about short lived queens it certainly isn't a stretch to think that there might well be a relationship. 
Deano? Naaaaaa, he probably puts it on his toast.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

LOL, but he's a veritable little ferret at finding rare studies about the effects of chemicals.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Yeah, this one should be child's play for him.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Many of the talks or papers I’ve read (going from memory…no citations) indicate that the issues are often the contaminant residues in beeswax. In particular, as I’m sure you guys know, fluvalinate and coumaphous. I also haven’t heard anything directly related to amitraz.
This study might be of interest though.
http://www.extension.org/pages/3084...ects-of-some-commonly-used-bee-hive-chemicals

Who knows....maybe Dean's internet search engine is in the shop for an oil change


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## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

While Dean is busy you might be interested in this paper:
http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1590&context=etd


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

I had 150 queens ordered for a mid March delivery from a sizeable supplier I’ve used in the past. Because of his location, he is able to have mated queens weeks before I can. In late December he told me his hives were in a major collapse and he would be unable to deliver my queens.
I have to ask myself…what would cause such an operation wide collapse in a relatively large operation run by experienced people? And as is appropriate to this thread….how do the things that result in such a collapse affect the queens produced by them?

When I was about 12 I went to the eye doctor. As he handed me my prescription…he laughed and said ‘son…your next prescription is going to be a seeing eye dog’. Fifty years later and I’m not quite ready for the dog but needless to say my eyesight hasn’t improved. I say all of this to explain why I’ve never produced my own queens. I simply don’t have the eyesight to graft. I just got a Jenter and have a Mann Lake graftless box on the way and expect to break them in this spring. It’ll mean a very different strategy for my nuc production but I’ve had enough of the headaches of buying queens from commercial suppliers.
Nothing boring about keeping bees…..


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Hmm.. Thats interesting, copper napthenate screwed around with the bees memory more than anything except coumaphos.

And still some folks around my parts get their boxes treated.....


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

jim lyon said:


> I hesitated to make that post as I wasn't able to find any links.


Here's one document that mentions this relationship:
http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/files/147887.pdf
It doesn't report hard numbers, though. Go to page 4 and read the left column, or use a "page search" feature (Control-F on many browsers) to search for "amitraz".


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Oldtimer said:


> Hmm.. Thats interesting, copper napthenate screwed around with the bees memory more than anything except coumaphos.


And what made that even more interesting...only a single interior surface had been treated! Can you imagine what it would have done if all of the wood surfaces inside the hive had been treated?
Ok...got to run...honey to deliver....bees to check...and this evening a pint at the pub with some other local beekeepers. There is something to be said for winter. In spring it is all I can do to eat and drop into bed at the day's end.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i'm seeing the other salient advantage of raising your own queens is that you get to evaluate each one's performance prior to putting her into production.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Oldtimer said:


> Hmm.. Thats interesting, copper napthenate screwed around with the bees memory more than anything except coumaphos.
> 
> And still some folks around my parts get their boxes treated.....


Yeah I have seen these studies as well. What would be of interest to me is a study showing reduced ovary size or some related measurable physical change in a queen exposed to Amitraz. I think that would be of great interest to anyone considering using Apivar or something off label. 
Come on Dean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=angi1vwUkQc


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## EastSideBuzz (Apr 12, 2009)

They had a tough time mating them last year due to weather in CA early on. So it depends on the weather out there also. If a queen has to wait to do a mating flight to long or not enough drones get out of their homes due to weather it can make for some wussy queens.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

Don't people treat hives with copper nathenate? I recall a John Pluta video of him treating all his woodware with that and Diesel fuel.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Yes they do. Personally, I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.

(Well I would, but not my bees).


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Thanks Radar. The words used were "It appeared, though, that Api-Life VAR may be toxic to sperm in the spermatheca".

Interesting but doesn't tell you much. Wonder if there's any hard numbers.


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