# When do yall check mating nucs?



## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

I swear I may have the worst luck of any beekeeper ever in the history of the world.

I suck at grafting. I've already covered that in an earlier post. I will get better, so no worries.

I poorly planned my first grafting attempt and had to cage my cells so they wouldn't kill each other while I was out of town. That worked great but the acceptance of the virgin queens was horrible.

Before leaving town again for another week, I checked the nucs 8 days post virgin queen installation. I found 2 laying queens. One of them flew off as soon as I pulled the frame from the hive. She gone. The hive she was in made queen cells and I put them in 4 of the queenless nucs last weekend. I checked them again last weekend. 14 days post virgin installation and found 2 laying queens. One of them disappeared and I thought she fell back in the nuc. I checked the ground around the hive stand and saw no evidence of her. 

I checked the laying nucs again today and apparently she didn't land in the nuc because they now have started queen cells.

I checked one of the nucs that I put a queen cell in last weekend, and they had torn it down and now there are eggs and 4-5 day old larvae in the nuc. I didn't see the queen, but there is evidence of her so I will at least claim a moral victory on that one.

So now for my question. When do YOU check for laying queens? I'm thinking 4 weeks post cell implant might be good and eliminate lost queens, BUT that's going to tie up a lot more resources if I have to wait 4 weeks to remove laying queens.

Any tips to keep from losing them? I've never had this problem before when having "naturally" made queens.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

Day 23 mother to be I really just got into small mating nucs this yr and only done them a handful of times I check the frame that the cells were on as that is usually where they start laying if I don't see eggs on that visit I check back in a week if still no eggs I drop a frame of young brood and check back in 48 hrs . It works for me


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## ApricotApiaries (Sep 21, 2014)

We have been checking and picking +/- day 28. If everything goes as planned, there is a nice solid sheet of capped brood. If they mated early the brood is even emerging. 
If they rejected the cells and raised their own, there are still usually eggs and larvae at this point. 
But when *[email protected]# hits the fan we run into laying workers, which would probably be avoided if we checked earlier. These get shook out and rebuilt using brood from the successful ones. 
This is the first year we've tried raising more than a handful of queens so I am still very much learning. I know alot of people have their preferences for a lot of different reasons.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

Placing 10 day old cells, I check in two days to see if they've emerged correctly. I just check the queen cell for the nice round hole in the bottom. Then I check in 2 weeks for eggs. So, 16 days after placing a ripe cell.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

I would say you are very good at making queens if
you don't keep on losing them. I hate flying away
queens too. 

When do YOU check for laying queens?
I check them continuously on the key date from capped cells to virgin to
a laying queen. Usually in day 14th after she emerged I 
will check for her mating flight if it is a successful one or
not. Then waited three more days to check for some eggs.

Any tips to keep from losing them?
To be successful on this I waited just before the sunset
to check the mating nucs. When it is almost dark they are
very calm bees including the virgin or mated queens too. Where
else they would go if they cannot see too well. This is to take
advantage of their instinct that it was time to stay in to relax when
the busy bee day is almost over.


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

I'm in the same dilemma so this thread is welcomed.

My lesson learned so far:

1. Do things right from the beginning keeps you from useless work afterwards
2. Check in two weeks if the weather was good or in three in case of poor weather

Being a bit lazy is the most sane attitude when you have more then 10 nucs or you lack time. In the end you will get some poor queens anyway


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## rookie2531 (Jul 28, 2014)

I do it like Ray. Put queen cells in splits, not emerged queen. Check just the cell, to see if she emerged. Then try to wait 30 days after graft day for eggs.


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

What's the most productive way of treating laying workers, drone laying queens, small dark odd queens(you may get all sorts)? They are all hard to spot and the common symptom is that they _repeatedly tear down cells_.

I'm thinking on just shaking those nucs in front of another colony and shake back other bees.


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## dsegrest (May 15, 2014)

Brad Bee said:


> I swear I may have the worst luck of any beekeeper ever in the history of the world.
> 
> I suck at grafting. I've already covered that in an earlier post. I will get better, so no worries.
> 
> ...


I think your queening skills are good and your vision is bad. Unless you are trying to get queens to sell, or unless you have a very large apiary, I would say you are getting pretty good results from your naturally made queen process. I check my queen castle after 3 weeks. If one of the apartments hasn't produced a queen, I just pull a division board to unite that mini-hive with the one next door.


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## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

I have 20/15 uncorrected vision. At 44 some things are starting to wear out, but my eyesight isn't one of them.

Just as a clarification. The days I posted are the number of days after installing the virgin queen, not the days from egg prior to grafting.


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## crocodilu911 (Apr 17, 2015)

Brad Bee said:


> I have 20/15 uncorrected vision. At 44 some things are starting to wear out, but my eyesight isn't one of them.
> 
> Just as a clarification. The days I posted are the number of days after installing the virgin queen, not the days from egg prior to grafting.


Brad, 

if you introduced virgins in cage, i would check 3 days later to make sure they are out of cage. so look for the cage, open , if they have queen cells in there i would let her out and let her deal with it, or them with her. if you introduce queen cells, i would wait at least 4 weeks. 
you checking anytime sooner it's extra work. some might be good queens, but just started laying eggs or worker layer and then she started also laying eggs. the thing is you can't make the difference, it's at molecular level at this point, so just let them be for 4 weeks. if they work, they work, if not, they don't. you can always make new ones after that, but the chances of them working without you opening them up, are higher than if you open them up. it's like the grafting nuc, if you keep opening it up to check on your queen cells, you will loos more of them just by this action. 

if you intention is to have nucs, that you use to mate queens, then you can introduce your q-cell prior to hatching, and then you can check about 10 days into it..i would leave it for 2-3 weeks. that way, when you check for her then, you can also pull her out, and introduce a new queen cell. 
we started a program in my old company and planned to mate 480 queens, so we build the mating nucs, and we introduced the queen cells. since we did not knew how to handle this, we did experiments, so we went out an looked at some after 3 days, after 7 , 10 and 15 days. the best results at the end with a 80% mated queen ratio were the ones we checked at 15 days. the other ones had under 60%. so we did our next batch, after pulling the queens out, we left them 3 days, went back and introduced our queen cells, without destroying their queen cells. ours were 7 days old cells, just prior to capping or just being capped. it worked perfect. we look at them after 20 days, and we had a 85% take on all of them. 
i just did 12 nucs, introduced virgins and i went 3 days later to check. my problem was that i introduced to fast my queens, so most of them did not took. they made new queens, and i wen and checked after 2 weeks, and found open queen cells, so i know i have virgins running around. i am going back next weekend, since it will be my 4 week mark. the ones that did not work, will be used as supers for the ones that worked. and i will start some new ones since my donner hives are already full again with bees and honey. i will leave them 4 weeks, and also treat at the same time, since the brood count will go to almost 0 capped brood, until the new queen does her job, so i hope with this to knock varroua down drastically on these nucs.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

RayMarler said:


> Placing 10 day old cells, I check in two days to see if they've emerged correctly. I just check the queen cell for the nice round hole in the bottom. Then I check in 2 weeks for eggs. So, 16 days after placing a ripe cell.


Same here except I check 14 days after placing the cell - I usually find brood then if the hive is queenright. I will also check before day 14 if I have another batch of cells ready so that I can give one to any that aren't queenright at that time.

I haven't ever introduced virgins - because it sounds riskier - but that's just me. Although I'm pretty sure the bulk of queens reared commercially are introduced to mating nucs as cells - there's probably a good reason for that.


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## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

crocodilu, stupid me, I only used a cage on one virgin. Now the reason for that escapes me, but there was a reason. She is one of the ones that made it. I directly introduced the others after spraying them down and the bees and frames in the nucs down with lemon juice laden sugar water. That apparently didn't work worth a hoot.

David, thanks for the response and also to Ray and all the others that responded. 

I don't plan on introducing virgins to nucs again, and these were WEAK nucs. Most had 1 frame of bees. None had more than 2.

I have always been one to share the information I learn when I mess up. I do that on the bee forum or I'll tell you straight up in person. Lots of people probably are somewhat ashamed when they screw up, but I take my lumps and learn from it. I'm not hesitant to share, because maybe I can keep someone else from goofing up.

I think Thomas Edison said he didn't fail to make a light bulb 1000 times before he succeeded, he just found 1000 ways not to make one. I may be the Thomas Edison of beekeeping.  

I'm going to write a book on beekeeping one of these days, "1000 Ways Not to Be a Beekeeper" LOL


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

RayMarler said:


> Placing 10 day old cells, I check in two days to see if they've emerged correctly. I just check the queen cell for the nice round hole in the bottom. Then I check in 2 weeks for eggs. So, 16 days after placing a ripe cell.


I cell the nuc and catch 16 days later. Can't really see the point in using virgins. Let the new queen emerge in her nuc.


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

Michael Palmer said:


> I cell the nuc and catch 16 days later. Can't really see the point in using virgins. Let the new queen emerge in her nuc.


What do you do when you have a drone layer and you don't find her(possibly laying workers)? I've seen sm. black that resembled a queen but I couldn't find her any more, shook through queen excluder and no luck. They keep on tearing cells.
What happens if I shake them in front of other colony? Is there any chance the failing queen creeps in the colony?


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

When do I check my mating nucs? Apparently not soon enough. Seems like I set these cells just the other day. It actually wasn't as bad as it looks. I'd prefer to have all that honey on a frame though.




























A couple more days & I'd really be in trouble.



















You know where the queen is when they are this full? Better be careful.



















Right side reduced, new cell set. Much better! Once the foragers fly back from the frames I removed, they will draw out those new frames fast. I had to shave off the side bars to aviod burr comb for too much space with just four. But once they get decently drawn, I will remove one or they'll be too tight.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

I agree with Mr. Palmer. Don't peek to see if she's hatched out, just add 2 queen cells per nuc. Wait for the 16th day to check brood pattern.


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## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

I've seen some puzzling things here in the last 2 weeks. I have somehow gained 3 more laying queens. No signs of eggs until 24 days after the virgin queens were introduced. All of these nucs had the stores to start raising brood right away. I'm no old veteran of beekeeping but I've not seen a time when it took a queen 24 days to start laying after they hatched. Apparently it happens though. The last ones to start laying are prolifically laying, not holding back or laying a spotty pattern. 

I wonder if any of this is weather related? Two weeks after the virgin introductions we experienced a week of hot weather. Temps in the upper 90's with heat indicies were running 105. We then had a cool snap where the daily highs were in the mid 80's. That's when these 3 queens started laying. Temps are now back up in the upper 90's and I'll check them today to see if there laying has been interrupted or if they're still at it.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

It is impossible to get a laying queen after it hatched for 24 hours.
A 24 hours queen is still hardening of to prepare her for the mating
flight. It takes a week to get her ready for this task. If the virgin
queen is not mated then she will only give you the drone bees. A mated
queen will give you the worker bees. So be in the look out for some drone
cells unless somehow there are lost virgins on their mating flight that got
into your mating nuc and take over your hive. This had happened before. I 
wonder marking the virgin will give you a more precise outcome and a clear 
picture of things.


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## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

Who said anything about 24 hours?


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## Flyer Jim (Apr 22, 2004)

Brad Bee said:


> So now for my question. When do YOU check for laying queens? I'm thinking 4 weeks post cell implant might be good and eliminate lost queens,


Day 16, just like Ray and Mike. You didn't say what size nuc you use, if you are using mini nucs, 4 weeks and you could have swarm problems.


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## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

Thanks for the reply Jim, this time I was using a standard 5 frame nucs.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Oops, my bad.
Yes, 24 days is a bit fast. Mine is usually 28 days or so.


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

Flyer Jim said:


> Day 16, just like Ray and Mike. 4 weeks and you could have swarm problems.


Or laying worker problems. Although it seems later in summer it isn't as big a risk as it is earlier. They can revert to laying workers _pretty_ darn quickly spring-the first half of summer if conditions are right.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Yep, I don't like LWs either especially when they are full of
nurse bees in a queen less nuc or when the queen failed to come from her
mating flight. How do you deal with them anyway?


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