# Ai for late season queens



## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

Not generally. AI is not a back yard Operation, it requires rather expensive equipment. Those that have it do not waist time when sales numbers will be low


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

not only that, but if you are killing $25 queens, why on earth would you want a $400 + queen?


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## hex0rz (Jan 14, 2014)

I know the ai apparatus is spendy, so I figured those sort of people would be trying to capitalize on it. What would these caliber of people be doing with their time when sales would be low?

Do all ai queens go for 400 smackaroonies?


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Drone populations diminish to the point that even collecting semen for a few insemination becomes a big deal. Its hard enough with ample flying drones. 

You'd be far better off combining anything that's queenless and splitting in the spring.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Yes. That is one of the HUGE advantages of Instrumental Insemination. The other option is to order queens from Hawai'i. Kona Queens even does I.I. on some of their breeders.

The caveat - it is very expensive. This practice is best for those who KNOW they REALLY need to improve their stock, and are willing to "pay to play the game". The strategy is to get a few started and breed F2 generations from them with your locally-adapted stock. "Improve, not replace" is the idea.

Superior genetics must be imported to your apiary, they do not magically appear, and I.I. is the shortcut. Done correctly, you make progress toward your genetic goal with I.I. every generation. With open mating, you can even lose ground toward your genetic goal much of the time. Random (resulting from open mating) is seldom as effective as selective breeding.

If you still rate yourself "better at killing off your hives than at managing them", I'd hold off until you have your system down and working a bit better. Your first goal is to expand your apiary. You'll need enough colonies to select who's got this trait or that trait and who does not.

Next item is to develop an idea about a genetic goal - what traits are working in your apiary and what are not? Traits are largely dealt with one-at-a-time, the next generation is tested, and the process continued. At this point, you should be getting pretty good at making colonies increase, and needing more capacity in your honey room. You'll also get good at introducing queens before taking the plunge into stock improvement.

You'll probably start out buying the best mated queens you can and re-queening your worst colonies with them. This is importing good genetics, the biggest short-cut you can take. You get a lot of good traits at once, about the only time that happens. You WILL notice the difference.

To continue to improve, you are really becoming a breeder. Checking and charting traits, keeping track of bloodlines, out-crossing with well-chosen stocks, and considering I.I. yourself at some point soon to be able to afford it. It's a long-term commitment to build a competitive advantage to your bee business. It takes a few years getting there, but it's worth it if you really want better bees. 

A lot of beekeepers get by just fine without it, but some really appreciate superior bees - and heck, what's wrong with rugged, self-maintaining, mite tolerant, gentle bees that make LOTS of honey, don't build bridge or burr comb, and rarely lose a colony? Life gets pretty easy when the bees are doing half the beekeeper's work. If you are selling queens and nuc' colonies, the money could get pretty good, too.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

I don't think hex0rs was talking about trying to improve stock. He was talking about late in the season when you take that one last peak and roll your queen or drop a frame or whatever. And you need a queen now, but breeding season is all done. A virgin queen (of unknown quality) is easy to raise year-round. So he's thinking raise a virgin, pump her with some drone juice, and price her where a desperate beekeeper might be willing to toss the cash faced with loosing a hive.

I wonder how an II queen would do if dropped into a queenless winter cluster when they're broodless. What would the effect be on the queen who was II and then didn't lay an egg for a couple of months?


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Probably not as easy in Idaho as it works down here in SoCal, where we just feed them and they increase, all winter long. Along the coast, the winters here are often warmer than the summers, so buildup for nuc's to go to almonds is critical to our operations.

My point was to say that, yes, I.I. is workable in late season in some cases, but is really meant for those in position to improve stock, not for the 2-colony late re-queening hobbyist. Notice that I suggested holding off until his system is working a bit better, and also mentioned buying mated queens from Hawai'i. 

If he already has winter conditions, by all means combine with a strong colony and re-queen in the Spring.

Mostly, we learn to get plenty of nuc' colonies happily increasing before the Big Bomb Day, August 15th, when we treat the hives for mites with the strongest treatment of the year. This treatment is often rough on the queens, so combining a nuc' afterwards is a good method to replace the queens that don't fare so well after mite treatment.

Mating queens after August probably gets talked about more here on Beesource than actually happens in the Northern Hemisphere.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

First of all JC has a good point to clarify the OP. Because of the time and expense involved with the ai queens, they are
mainly for improving the stocks only. It is not the beekeeper's error because he is learning along the process. Yes, lots of doubt along the learning curve in his ability. I killed more queens than anyone here, I believed. And make more of them too during queen grafting seasons. This is all due to my ignorant to the fact errors made by not learning the how to part. By my 3rd year I have already learned from most of my foolish mistakes. 
Still have 2 cells in the development process now. So yes, if you have a laying queen she will lay all winter long here if everything is keep in good feeding condition. Last year I have tested this method out. So this year I'm repeating it again. I'm still trying to expand my apiary now that the gentle on the queen expanded coverage OAV treatment gadget has invented. My last test one week ago went extremely well without killing the young laying carnis/Italians queen. Lots of
dead mites though. God vid and pics of that. If there is a chance here, I will release my expanded coverage and improved oav treatment gadget for you all to see. Finally, the treatment does not has to be a harsh one on the queen and bees before going into the winter. Yes, all 10 frames and the upper hives got the coverage as well. If there isn't another more powerful gadget on the market today, I believe mine can save the bee industry. It is only at the V2 development stage now. Lots of room for its improvement in the future version.
So don't worry, as long as you have the bees you can expand again when your knowledge have expanded and learn not to kill off too many hives. It gets worse before turning better if you know how to improve from your past mistakes. I did and growing ever since. Improvement is the key here. Staring over again, I had one frame of bees and a new mated queen going into winter and expanded to 7 hives the coming season. After that been making new queens to expand every year. It is very doable if you know how. I did not read any bee books only youtube vids and BS reading back to a few years when I started. If there is no answer for my questions here I designed my own little bee experiments to try to find out the answers. 
So don't be too harsh on yourself now. Time is still on your side if you have to goto ebay for some mated queens. I got a good Russians/Italians mix NY queen from 2 years ago that is still laying strong going into her 3rd winter. Going to make some graft from this queen if she can survive our winter here.


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## hex0rz (Jan 14, 2014)

Can drone sperm not be preserved? We can keep human sperm, why not drone?


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Sure they can. But for how long is beyond me.
I don't think the temp. is the same as us humans.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

Some studies have indicated that the most viable way to store it, is room temperature. You can cryo freeze it, but a lot of viability is lost, assuming during the thawing. Problem is, room temperature doesn't last very long, few weeks at most.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Is there some fashion by which drones can be banked and kept alive? I have a good number of drones in some of my colonies still. Could I set up a screened box shake in a pound of bees and a pound of drones? Would the workers just kill them or starve them out?

I had the hair brained idea of trying that in a quart mason jar and leaving them in the dark in a cool spot like in my basement this winter and see how long the bees survived.

Just for grins. Also wanted to see if a mated queen would survive in a jar in a similar scenario.

If I end up with an extra laying queen when combining down I might give that a whirl. I don't suspect that it would work very well, but it might be an interesting experiment I guess.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

On your mated queen and drones proposed little bee experiment, I have the following response:

Unlike the queen ants which can fly and drop in a certain area to lay the first
egg and start a new colony in no time, the bees being a community insect almost like
us humans, cannot survive on their own. They need other helpers to keep the hive in balance. Each new hatch will help sustain the next generation of new bees on that particular frame that they hatched on.
So being in a community setting your proposed experiment will only end up killing
the queen and drones. Why? 
Because if you add a new queen in a containment situation into a new hive they will only take care of the queen for no more than one month or 2. Sometime for 2 weeks max. If the new hive is queen right then the new contained queen is doomed for sure. Such is their nature!
About the drones, they too need to roam and feed themselves to maintain all the bodily functions. You will find the most drones on the pollen/nectar frames. In a cooped up situation they will die very slowly and without the care of the worker bees they will die less than 1 month or so. The cold and starvation will kill them for sure without the option of clustering to keep them warm in the winter time. We all know how cold IA winter is, right. Of all my little bee experiments so far I have never intentionally (knowing the final result) try to kill the bees. I do believe in karmas. And what goes around will comes around in a short time.


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