# Bad batch of queens



## HVH (Feb 20, 2008)

I usually get about 90% take with grafting then a couple of cells in the incubator don't hatch then a few don't get mated or accepted. This has been kind of the norm. This last batch, 60 out of 66 grafts were drawn out and about 10 cells didn't hatch in the incubator. After checking the mating nucs 10 days later I can't find eggs or larva. I'm thinking that the 10 cells not hatching were a red flag and something went wrong with this particular batch. I didn't really worry about it at the time they were hatching because I got some large vigorous queens that were very active. 
Has anyone else had a batch drawn out and such a high percentage that did not hatch. It is possible that I lost power to the incubator (which usually holds a pretty steady 93-94F). Aside from maybe losing power, I cannot think of a single thing that went wrong. Any ideas?


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## BEES4U (Oct 10, 2007)

*Perhaps more time.*

A Simple Queen Rearing Technique



Day 1 - Give breeder hive an empty dark brood comb to lay eggs in. 
Day 4 - Transfer (graft) larva into artificial queen cell cups, from the breeder comb. Place the frame into a strong colony (cell builder) made queenless the day before. 
Day 14 - Remove completed cells from cell builder. Leave one cell behind to replace the queen. Keep queen cells warm (80-94 F) until they are placed in queenless hives (mating nucs). 
Day 22 - Virgin queens are ready to mate. They require nice weather (69 F), and an abundance of drones to mate with. A few colonies within a mile are adequate for providing drones for mating. 
Day 27 - If queens mate without weather delay, they should now be laying eggs. 
Weather delays in mating will add days to the process, after 3 weeks delay, virgin queens may start to lay unfertilized eggs. 
Time your activities so that warm temperatures and drones are available when the queens are ready to mate. 
I put my 10th day after grafting cells into their nucs , count 17 day after celling, and cage out the queens
Regards,
Ernie
Lucas Apiaries


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## BEES4U (Oct 10, 2007)

*By day 12*

you should see eggs
Ernie


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## HVH (Feb 20, 2008)

Thanks Ernie,

I checked again for eggs earlier in the day yesterday (better backlighting) and found them in all the colonies I thought were failures. After checking with the wife, I realized that I actually placed the queens in mating nucs a few days later than originally thought so seeing eggs yesterday convinced me that I just jumped the gun. In fact, I saw one of the queens coming back from her mating flight. 
I still cannot explain why so many cells failed to hatch. This was the first time I have had so many cells fail to hatch (about 10 out of 60).


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## BEES4U (Oct 10, 2007)

*Black Queen Cell Virus In Commercially Reared Queen Bees*

I hope this is not the reason for a lowered %

BLACK QUEEN CELL VIRUS IN COMMERCIALLY REARED QUEEN BEES
Grażyna Topolska
Warsaw Agricultural University, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Clinical Sciences, E-mail: grazyna_topolska©sggw.pl
Black queen cell virus (BQCV) has been found to be a cause of death of queen prepupae and pupae. *In adult bees it almost invariably multiplies only in those individuals that are also infected with Nosema apis. *Recent studies conducted in Maryland (USA) revealed the presence of the virus in 100% of queen bees which were collected for examination from randomly chosen colonies. From our previous investigations of queen cells, we draw the conclusion that queen rearing apiaries can differ considerably as to the level of BQCV infection of reared queen bees.
In this work we examined for presence of BQCV unmated queens sold to bee keepers by four queen rearing apiaries. The queens were reared in May and August. BQCV was found only in the queens reared in one apiary but both in May and August. These queens were free from Nosema apis spores so we concluded that they had become infected with the virus through ingestion of contaminated food during the larval rather than the mature stage.

Regards,
Ernie


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## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

hvh writes:
I checked again for eggs earlier in the day yesterday (better backlighting) and found them in all the colonies I thought were failures. 

tecumseh writes: 
just prior to a new queen beginning to lay the workers will begin to polish 'round shaped' areas on the face of the frames. these areas will appear slighly glossy and once polished the workers seem inhibited from walking across these groups of cells (it's almost like they have some invisible posted signs around these areas).


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## BEES4U (Oct 10, 2007)

*Hvh*

How are your new queens doing?
Ernie


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## HVH (Feb 20, 2008)

Ernie,

Thanks for asking. All in all I am happy that I can graft and otherwise produce good queens, but I still think I have a ways to go. I still don't understand why I find so many nucs that are queenless two weeks after queen introduction. I have on occasion found the dead queen in her introduction cage. I also find that some of the queens don't seem as energetic if left in the incubator for more than a day or so. I am getting the impression that the queens hatch out full of energy and looking for a hand out. They don't find a hand out so they resort to eating the queen candy in their emergence cages. If I have 60 queens grafted, I will probably end up with 50-55 cells. Out of 55 cells maybe 53 will hatch. Out of the 53 that hatch, maybe 5 or so seem sluggish. If I introduce these queens a day or two later, maybe 2 or 3 will be found dead in the incubator. If I take the rest out to the apiary another queen may die by the time I get them all placed into nucs. So there appears to be some sort of attrition. My best guess is that banking the queens in a hive would reduce the queens incubator fatigue. At this point I am only guessing. I plan on building a queen bank and comparing. The worst part in all of this is the utter sense of failure one feels when only 2/3 of the queens end up productiveand 1/3 dead. I know the queens were reared correctly. The queens that recover from post hatching trama are very prolific and are sometimes found three years later in the hive with a good laying pattern. So, I think they are stressed somehow before placing in the nucs and some of them never recover. Any thoughts here would be most welcomed.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

It sounds like you are keeping the queen cells in the incubator until they emerge, or later (I get this impression from your statement, "a day or two later, maybe 2 or 3 will be found dead in the incubator."), then introducing virgin queens to queenless mating Nucs. I believe that as soon as a queen emerges, she will benefit from being fed royal jelly by nurse bees instead of having to fend for herself. Also, her acceptance would thereby also be enhanced by increased interaction with her new subjects.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

I wouldnt use the incubator to have the queens hatch out. I would use them to free up the cell builder so you can graft more if you would like. Get the cells to the ripening age and then put them in the mating nucs.


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## Brandy (Dec 3, 2005)

I think the use of an incubator would be invaluable in the cold, wet, windy, spring's that some of us encounter. I've lost a couple here and there either due to the cells being chilled upon caging, introducing to the mating nuc's, or a number of other reasons. I don't see these problems later on in the season, but this early spring weather say's incubator to me and I'm envious of those that already have them. But getting them from the incubator to the mating nuc's sooner might help with the stress. 

These queen rearing building's are also looking good to me after all the wind, rain and cold we've had!!


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## HVH (Feb 20, 2008)

I agree that the queens would be better off 'emerging' in the presence of nurse bees. Since being able to mark the queens and place them in an introduction cage are important to me, I plan on compromising and letting the queens hatch in the incubator, marking them, adding to a JZ BZ cage, and then immediately banking them in a hive arranged for banking. My losses, post introduction, might be explained by placing the nucs too close to one another. I have noticed recently, that the bees seem to abandon a nuc in favor of a neighbor leaving the other queen virtually unattended. I have been using a full frame of emerging brood per nuc, but the new emerging bees seem to relocate. This was the first year I tried stacking nucs separated by Snelgrove boards with the result being as described above. This is unfortunate, because I was able to group four nucs in a block while only needing one top and bottom board, which really concerved on woodenware. Does anyone else have a similar experience with placing nucs too near to each other and seeing abandonment of one nuc in favor of another?


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

I haven't tried these myself, yet, but perhaps these could help. http://www.vycage.com/

I had heard of a queen breeder, who would QA his queens while they were pupae. At a particular time window in the late development of his queen cells, he would gently and carefully open each ripe queen cell at its base, remove the queen pupae, weigh it and if it weighed a certain amount, or more, he would return it to its cell, then place it into a mating Nuc, to emerge and mate. If the pupae were underweight he would destroy them.

Since I am attempting to maintain Cordovan Italians, and even though my queens are "open mated", which provides that they may mate with very few, if any, Cordovan drones, and because of that, many potential mother queens may produce a limited percentage of acceptable daughter queens (I require that my queens are 100% Cordovan Italian, but even if they aren't pure mated, they are still acceptable). Heck, if they do mate with non-Cordovan drones, most produce very strong, productive, and gentle colonies. If the queens are pure Cordovan Italian, even if open mated, it's almost certain the queen is not contributing undesirable genetics to her offspring.

I had ideas, similar to yours HVH, of selecting virgin queens, after emergence, not only for the required quality of being pure Cordovan Italian, but also for size and shape, prior to committing them to mating Nuc resources. This Vera-Yordy equipment seems to fit such a need. However, your practice of letting them emerge (not hatch - hatching is what the egg does) inside an incubator, afterwards introducing the virgins, via cage to their intended mating Nuc, seems like a viable alternative.


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## HVH (Feb 20, 2008)

Joseph,

Thanks for the link. I think the system is similar in concept to using the JZ BZ cages and a frame for banking 
http://www.honeyrunapiaries.com/sto....html?osCsid=57bb73632b414aa3639e94a02a0180f1. 
The idea of opening the queen cell makes me nervous. I prefer candling the cells if needed, but for your application, it would be impossible to see color. 
I just came back from the apiary where I decided to release the virgins directly onto the face of a frame with bees and see how they treated her. To my surprise, only a couple of nucs started to be aggressive. I double checked the aggressive nucs and found that they had a laying queen with a very small patch of eggs. I guess its time to dust the books off again, because I thought virgins were supposed to be difficult to introduce. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I seem to recall that newly emerged queens have very little scent and are accepted, while waiting a few days decreases the rate on successful introduction. Anyone have experience with this?


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

HVH,
Similar, yes, but the Vera-Yordy have a place inside where you can secrete a ripe queen cell, grown in a JZsBZs queen cup, prior to emergence, then pull the entire contraption off the frame, place a candy tube or small marshmallow into the release hole, then introduce the new virgin queen in the traditional way. How do you hold your queen cells in your incubator until after the virgin queens emerge?

I am also way too nervous to manipulate immature queen pupae, outside their cells (I presently have too much trouble with causing damage to queens while they are still in their protective cells), in order to perform that type of QA. Besides, as you mentioned I don't think my main discriminator (the Cordovan color) would be evident until much later in the development of the young queens than I would ever feel comfortable manipulating (perhaps someday in the future).


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## HVH (Feb 20, 2008)

Joseph,

I will have to take a closer look at your link for banking queens. 
I currently remove the cells from the cell bar and place in those so called hair curler cages. If I place the queen under a push cage, say Wednesday night, and then release the queen from the push cage the next morning, the larvae I graft on Sunday will vary in age by no more than 12 hours. This helps to get all the queens emerging within a narrow window so I can be ready with marking paint. When the queens emerge, I mark them with Testors. I find that shaking the paint vial and then using the thin film left on the lid and a very small nail head allows me to paint the bald spot on the queen without getting it on the wings or in the eyes. If I then invert a JZ BZ cage over the queen as she runs up my hand, she will normally climb to the top of the inverted cage (cage bottom) which then allows me to snap the lid shut without injury to the queen. I did bank some of these cages with no losses whatsoever. 
I know everyone does these manipulations differently. I had to learn on my own, so my approach may fall short. I can say with confidence that grafting and incubation, up to emergence, works very well. The part I struggle with is post emergence. I have noticed that many queens, once introduced to a hive, are not released from their cages by the bees while others are released just fine. Then there is the intermediate group that survive for a week in the cage without being released. This weekend I tried releasing the virgins directly into the bees and found no aggressive behavior from queenless nucs that were made days in advance. The only aggression came from freshly made nucs and one nuc where I failed initially to find a queen. I am going to reread Doolittle's "Scientific Queen Rearing" because I remember him discussing the introduction of virgins. If I can use my current system, but get the queens marked and placed into a queen banking hive right away, I think survival rate would increase. Also, I cannot see any reason not to introduce the virgins directly into the bees which means no lag time before she takes her mating flight and no death in the cage. I need to experiment more with this.


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