# High Queen loss



## Beeslave (Feb 6, 2009)

Has anyone else been noticing a higher than normal queen failure? Booming hives to duds in 5-6 wks. No sign of swarm cells or supercedure cells.


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## Trevor Mansell (Jan 16, 2005)

Im seeing allot of supercedure and swarming this summer.


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## pahvantpiper (Apr 25, 2006)

Yes, seeing lots of new queens fail. Especially queens from Texas.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Our matings from east Texas this year were outstanding.


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## Bill Russell (Aug 12, 2006)

Shannon(Beeslave) 
Coming from a veteran of the queen failure club.....absolutely, the last 2 weeks have been rough. Have pullled honey off of 15 yards so far and already this early in the summer see about a 20% loss. The usual number of drone layers and swarm outs but the unusually bad thing I'm seeing just plane queens dying and no ss. Something else that gets my attention is the lack of brood in the queenrights. Sealed brood and some eggs. very little larvae. I've seen this when bees exposed to fungicides but what's this about. No fungicide exposure that I'm aware of.Corn is tasseling. Bees on a fairly decent flow.
To follow up un Bob Bliss's comment, got 200 queens from a friend in east Texas for replacements when bees got north. He makes a good queen. Anyway he expressed the same sentiment as Jim Lyon that mating was exceptional. Anyway, had good exceptance but now a vast majority of those queens are dead. 
Any NEW thoughts on the issue?


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Bill: Last year I would have agreed whole-heartedly but then I knew there were issues with mating conditions and in some cases low drone numbers because of lighter bees out of California, totally different this year with our bees. The year isnt over by a longshot we will see how the summer progresses particularly with the heat. One observation: I am not sure there is always a strong supercedure response in hives in which the queen just tapers off and eventually turns drone layer.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Sorry, we have noted to opposite, very few queens lost this year so far. Much better than in the previous years. From notes on the roof, I suspect a few queens have been orderly superceded, but no alot. Most of our queens are from last year, not grafted. In the past we had seen a pattern of package queens looking great, and then failing and not being replaced successfully(they failed, and did not die).

People around us have had swarm issues, but we have seen no signs of swarming in our hives. 


Crazy Roland


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## Beeslave (Feb 6, 2009)

Everything here was going great. Yesterday I found 25% queenless. Swarming was the lowest I've seen with my bees......ever. what is really fishy is my yards that are surrounded by CRP and pasture are averaging around 3 poor hives per yard of 32. The
The yards that are surrounded by corn w/ plenty of forage nearby im finding upto 35% queen loss.


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## honeyshack (Jan 6, 2008)

I know that i am Canadian, but get some of my queens from the states
Some of the state side queens are really good. Others are slow to build and some have superceded
The newzeland packages have superceded alot of the queens.

I am also noticing with or w/o queen excluders, some of the hives are back filling the brood nest. A good 50%. Not impressed with this. Alot of work opening them backup. How they will do? Will know in a week or so when i do the first pull.

I think i am seeing supercedures on the hives due to weather conditions here in MB. We had a really good dandilion flow but were not able to utilize all of it due to weather, cool and wet. So none of the hives which were 90% packages were able to plug up...a good thing. As well, since we are in year 5 of overland flooding and high ground moisture, the plants themselves are not doing so well. Just a observation but 160 acre alfalfa seed fields are reduced to 30-60 acres with the rest cut for hay. Hay fields which were classed as alfalfa or alfalfa/grass have been down graded to alfalfa/grass or just grass fields
So, i think the supercedure and back filling has to do with theh lack of a strong flow as much as anything else.
I have also noted a large amount of chalk brood which has been a challenge for some hives. Some hives have cleared up, others are still fighting. In talking with the provincial ag bee guy, newzelands, while changing the breed of bee have taken little steps when it comes to chalk brood resistance. As well, I think our flooded wet cool lands and weather played a huge part in this. Chalk brood issues are throughout MB right now since we are all in the same situation.


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## sevenmmm (Mar 5, 2011)

Deleted


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## benstung (Mar 20, 2011)

the real art is finding the bad hives before it is to late. Its very easy to assume that since the hive was good at one point that it still is. having lots of extra queens in the bank really helped us. Lots of supersedure this early summer because of the rainy weather here. 

also isnt this a commercial forum? i would hope if all you have is a few hives they would be queen right.


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## Honey-4-All (Dec 19, 2008)

Just a guess here but I think in the long run this "acceptance" and "rejection" issue is going to resolve around a pollen issue correlated to other health issue the bees are currently going through. Our high loss rate areas the last couple of years have all been in yards where the pollen count or source was on the poor end of the scale. ?


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## alpha6 (May 12, 2008)

We are seeing the same thing. Good acceptance, queens start out really well, then start to fail with less and less brood. Hives that I pinched the queens which started doing this and let them raise their own have passed others that I let the queens run. Something is definitely going on with the queens from last year to this one. I was going to do a large requeening with CF Koehen and asked if they had figured out the problems they had last year (last year I had almost 100% failure with their queens. They replaced half of them for free and admitted there were problems with mating and fungicides near the mating nucs). I went with another N. Cali breeder this year. Queens were better but still hitting about 35% failure after a month or so of doing well. Anyway, calling Koehen they were playing dumb by saying they never had problems this year or last. They just lost a thousand queen order. If you can't be honest about your operation then I want nothing to do with them. SO right now we are re-assessing our hives and will re-queen this next week anything that is lacking in the least. If anyone knows of someone producing good queens this year that are still available let me know.


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## Beeslave (Feb 6, 2009)

2 other commercial Beekeepers around me are seeing the same problems as me. We don't run the same queen stock either. My new queens(350) this year are only at about a 6% failure! These poor hives came out of the almonds and most have 1yr old queens.


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## sevenmmm (Mar 5, 2011)

benstung said:


> also isnt this a commercial forum? .



Oopps. I clicked on what's new and didn't realize this. Sorry.


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## BEES4U (Oct 10, 2007)

Rick,
It should be ok.
If the commercial bee keepers are having the same proplems as the rest of U.S.A. there might be a common denominator!


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## honeyshack (Jan 6, 2008)

I should add, i went through a pile of pollen patties this spring and early into the summer before the flow. I still have some on the weaker ones.
I think our weather is a major player in this queen loss phenominom (sp). It has been so eratic all over the place. I think if we could find areas where the queens have come from where the weather for the past several year has not been so wild, there might be a correlation found.
Alpha, what are CF kohens?

HS


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## alpha6 (May 12, 2008)

They are a queen supplier out of Cali. Up until last year they produced very good queens. They had some serious problems last year and from what I have heard into this year with their queen quality so I am staying away from them until I get a good feel that they have resolved those issues.


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## swarm_trapper (Jun 19, 2003)

is any one noticing a correlation between queen loss and hives that went to almonds?

I didnt go but most guys that went this year that i talked to said the almonds bees are having a hard time getting it in gear.


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

Well it is that time of year when these problems show up. It is hard to evaluate queens when hot and supers are on. I know that memory can be selective, like when you recall the best producing colonies but forget the duds. Is it really any worse than previously? Do you actually keep records? I sure don't. 

Stay out of almond pollination next year and see if things improve. Riiiight.

No doubt there were poor mating conditions in California this year. 

It is disappointing to pick em up, I'm getting my share too.


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## gregstahlman (Oct 7, 2009)

we have hardly lost any hives since we moved back from Texas. texas was more windy than usual this spring but i didn't seem to affect the matings as far as we can tell. we set 72 hives in all our yards in SD and the hives are pretty even. all the yards in our outfit are maybe missing 1-3 hives in each yard. haven't really had any costomers complain about the queens that were purchased from us and we are located in TX. i would have to say it is directly related to how the queens were produced, not the location where they came from. of course fugicides never help much either. lol


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## SCFarms (Aug 22, 2008)

I have not noticed anything out of the ordinary and I have purchased about 1000 CF koehnen queens aswell. mostly what I have been hearing from other beekeepers around me is the guys who used the new formic quick strips are seeing high queen losses


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## mnbeekeeper (Jun 30, 2010)

so your saying the queen loss is happening now due to the use of the quick strip earlier in the season or what. we used the maqs in may and our hives are fine now. sure there was a loss here or there but no large amount of queen loss. i think the weather is the big factor. to much rain.


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## SCFarms (Aug 22, 2008)

The reports I have heard said they saw 25 to 40% queen loss directly fallowing the maqs application. The only high % queen losses that i had heard about were from the guys who used the quick stripes. few guys that I talked to recently treated just a few weeks ago and are having problems now and others who treated in may or june have already fixed their hives


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## MichaBees (Sep 26, 2010)

I bought 110 some queens from different suppliers this year (from the good, the bad and the ugly suppliers)
64 are still alive; 20% DOA, some died on the cage prior to release, some were replaced by the bees a few days after arrival. 
I think I will raise my own next year, and maybe will add some fresh genes once in a while; this could be a better way for me. 
Not a commercial beekeeper here, but just wanted to share my experience this year. 

Aurelio (leo) Paez
DBA Micha Honey and Bees.


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## alpha6 (May 12, 2008)

I don't use MAQS in my hives and the bad queens we got from Koehen were last year...so bad I didn't order from them this year. Hopefully they fixed their problem. I know that Dr. Marla Spivak was out to their operation to help them figure out the problems. My issue with them isn't that they didn't get the problem fixed and are now producing good queens, but that they lied that there ever was a problem. I just don't like doing business like that. Glad yours worked out for you and before last year I was always happy with Koehnen.


SCFarms said:


> I have not noticed anything out of the ordinary and I have purchased about 1000 CF koehnen queens aswell. mostly what I have been hearing from other beekeepers around me is the guys who used the new formic quick strips are seeing high queen losses


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## acbz (Sep 8, 2009)

Bill Russell said:


> Something else that gets my attention is the lack of brood in the queenrights. Sealed brood and some eggs. very little larvae. I've seen this when bees exposed to fungicides but what's thisabout.


Hi Bill, I saw a lot of that too when I was checking our hives. I assumed these hives had swarmed (had heavy swarming this year as you know) and caught a queen who had just begun laying. I also noticed a lot that had sealed brood and no eggs but didn't act queenless...some of those did have eggs a week later. others not. 

Re Beeslaves comment on higher queen loss in the yards surrounded by the "green deserts" aka corn fields- We are all suspecting the neonics since there's a lot more corn around these days and this queen failure has been a pattern the last few years. But is there any possibility that lower quality and less diverse pollen sources (corn deserts) can also cause this disappearing queen thing? I've never heard about this causing queen problems, and it doesn't seem likely since periods of pollen dearths don't cause this to happen. But still..something is going on and one wonders if it's a contributing factor?


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## HVH (Feb 20, 2008)

alpha6 -
My bees were from Koehnen last spring and I would have lost about every hive if I didn't add cells in the late spring. Of those colonies where the cells didn't emerge or the virgin didn't make it back to the hive each became laying worker colonies without supersedure. Without an early build up my new queens had a lot of catching up to do which means no honey for me this year. I've learned my lesson. I don't plan on relying on a commercial source for queens other than some stock to graft from. If it means staying in a motel in California to start some early queen rearing - so be it.


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