# Evaluating New Queens...



## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

In my little bee club we are putting together a bee and queen breeding project to begin running in the 2017 season. 

We have limited space, resources and manpower, like most small clubs/groups. But we are looking at breeding around 100 queens a year, then keeping only the top 20 to overwinter, rinse and repeat. One objective is to come up with a template for other small groups to use with the idea of gradually breeding up better queens for their area.

Has anyone any advice to offer on grading the queens? When, how and what for? We have some ideas but would like to hear what has worked for others.

Merry Christmas all!
Janet


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## Steve in PA (Jan 26, 2015)

Watching this thread


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## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

Greetings Steve!

Just to give everyone something to comment on, we are thinking of a double weighted grading system, a very simple algorithm:

Grading on a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent), 

A: Overwintering (weighted by a multiplier of 2)
B: Heaviness of spring brood up (weighted by a multiplier of 1.5)
C: Honey yield for size of colony (a bit subjective that one)

Demerits: one point off for disease, ditto for bad temper.

So each queen will be graded with the formula

(A x 2) + (B x 1.5) + (C) = Grade minus any demerits


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

I don't grade any queens the first year either, I let them overwinter first then see how they build up etc....


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## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

We do not have the resources to overwinter 100 queens, so we will have to do some form of evaluation on the queens in the season they are bred. I have found in my own limited experience that there tends to be a discernible bell curve to queen quality...25% are pretty awesome, 50% are so-so, and 25% are duds.

We are only going to be able to overwinter our 20 best per season, then we will evaluate the survivors the following spring and choose the best 3 for our queen castles (which will generate eggs for queen cells and the next season's new 100 queens). The next best populate the cell builders etc., all the suppport and honey hives.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

How soon after emerging the queen starts laying. I like 14 days. Up to 21 days is OK, but I like 12-16 better.

How vigorously she lays the first brood cycle or two after mating. I love it when she lays up all available space with gusto. This will also depend on how many young bees she has with her to tend brood and other hive duties.

Good brood patter. I check the egg pattern and the sealed brood pattern. Good egg pattern but spotty sealed brood pattern can indicate hygienic behavior with high varroa mite loads. A good and expanding egg pattern is great to see. With spotty sealed brood then treatments may be warranted. 

A nice size and shape of queen. Some say this doesn't matter so much, but I disagree myself. I want a good size and shape to my queens. If nothing else, it's good insurance to longevity of laying from good mating.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

JRG13 said:


> I don't grade any queens the first year either, I let them overwinter first then see how they build up etc....


Good point.


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## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

Sqjcrk, point well taken. We are going to rely entirely on open matings. 

This of course will be an issue during blueberry bloom, as whatever drones are in the mobile pollination hives are largely NZ carniolans, and the new beekeepers in the area will ALL be running this year's imported queens and bees. So one of our challenges is that every year we are awash in the drones from this year's NZ shipments.

Past that time, over time, we should be able to impact our local DCA's. Not only will we run drone mother hives, we hope by distributing queens to all local takers we can also help elevate the DCA's. 

We also want to bring in a few queens each year from promising lines to keep our local bee gene pool diverse.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

My only concern if you grade the first year, is sometimes the splits come out unequal cuz of capped brood emergence drift etc.. so some queens seems super some seem like duds but only because one may have had a big head start.


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## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

JRG13 we are just going to have to try to grade fairly, based only on fecundity, to choose our 20 best of the year's queens for overwintering. You are right that if a queen gets more support troops to begin with, she will look better than an identical queen with fewer bees in her colony. We are going to have to try to give each queen roughly equal starting resources.

Those 20 will be graded for overwintering and spring buildup after their first winter. Then we have to decide who we'll be breeding from in that season, which will be the top 3-5 of those overwintered 20 queens.

Every year I have bred queens, two or three really distinguish themselves. These are girls who seem to grow their colony and lay up stores at a noticeably higher rate than the other queens in the apiary. Often the surprise is they are better at everything in spite of having a smaller colony. These are the rock stars we'll be looking for.


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## DerTiefster (Oct 27, 2016)

I asked a similar question on Pearl Harbor Day in this thread in the Beekeeping101 forum:

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?332556-productivity-assessment-let-me-count-the-ways
It may have some relevance to your question, being about assessment of queens/colonies.

Seems like a good question all around. How does one grade bees? It can't be much different from how does one "grade queens," given how tightly the queen is tied to her progeny and can't add to what paternal influence she's already stored up.

Michael


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## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

You got a lot of good advice in that thread Michael! But the one that caught my eye was the statement that honey production is a good metric for evaluating both queen and bees. To put up a good honey crop, the colony needs to provide many things, all of them good: a large worker force laid at max rate 6 weeks before the honey flow, health, low to no pest levels, good foraging propensity, good queen, ability to take care of the brood she lays along with all that means. Honey production is the United Way of bee metrics, an umbrella of goodness.

You will do well to watch Michael Palmer's youtube offerings on sustainable apiary techniques, and also the Billy Davis video on his version of Queen Castles and their management....both offer the possibility of creating that storehouse of drawn comb, along with other resources (bees).


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Been following this thread, so I'll add my thoughts.

I've been selecting breeding stock since the 90s. I have an advantage as I've had between 650 and 800 colonies from which I can choose breeding stock. I also don't requeen by the calendar. I have lots of colonies that haven't bee requeened or propped up in any way for many years....only treated for varroa. In a way, these colonies are self selecting for stock that performs well in my area and under my management. I have a breeder queen that I used in 2015 and 2016. I pulled her from a colony that I set up in 2001. That colony has been a top producer in its yard since setup. Because I keep records on every colony, I can see that colony has never had a drop in annual production...which might be caused by swarming, or queen failure, or poor wintering, or disease, etc. Of course that colony's queen has been superceded a number of times. 

That's one example. There are plenty of others. The question is, how to find them.

When I address a group, I often ask who has a colony that is always the best in the apiary, never needs any help, top producer, and this goes on for years. Those are the colonies that should be investigated further. Trouble is, most beekeepers now a days have been keeping bees for only a few years, with only a few colonies. But there are always some who raise their hand...they do have a colony like that in their apiary. So for you new at this stock improvement deal...look there, to beekeepers in your club who might just have what you need.

Once you find possible breeding stock, and you raise daughters from those colonies, how do you evaluate those daughter queens? Keep good records over time.

When I first started raising my own stock, I tried using the yard sheet published in Laidlaw's book, _Contemporary Queen Rearing._ Columns for numbered colonies, rows for selection criteria. At first I tried to use all the rows, but soon realized there were so many criteria that I was swamped, tracking things that made no sense to me and which took too much time to judge. How fast colonies enter the supers, or how much pollen the colony had on hand, etc. So I decided to reduce the number of criteria. 

Basically, if a colony is among the top producers in its apiary, it must be wintering well, have the ability to store ample pollen for colony use, enters supers quickly, etc. So, don't over think this. What are the 5 or 6 most import and criteria to you? Keep track of those. They might include, 

Ability to Winter Successfully..._How do you measure successful wintering?_
Diseases Present…_Chalkbrood is a good marker for hygienic bees_
Temper..._Propensity to sting, runny on combs, head butting, etc. _
Honey Produced..._Adjusted by how much feed the colony needed during the year_
Propensity to swarm
Varroa Count..._Change in population_

I see WW has overwintering, heaviness of spring buildup, production, with demerits for disease present and bad temper. But, how do you measure those, and aren't some related and results are being repeated. I mean, wouldn't a good producer have a heavy spring buildup and good wintering?

I measure successful wintering by:

Size of cluster when inner cover is first opened in the spring...late March/early April here
Number of frames of brood when the colony...when the colony is reversed in early May

Spring buildup by observing relation between early cluster size, brood count, and production.

When selecting good stock, the possible breeder queen colonies must be tracked over time. At least one production year, one winter, and one spring buildup. The more seasons you can track a colony the better. To me, queen longevity should be considered too. Hence several years of record keeping.

Now, about WWs formula. I don't think that will tell you all you need to know. And, I don't think you're giving disease present and bad temper enough weight. If a colony shows any disease at all it should be removed from the breeder list. Same as a colony with bad temper. Not just given a demerit, but removed.

As far as mating 100 queens and only attempting to winter 20%, I think that a mistake. You should winter them all, and the following season begin the selection process, looking for reasons to remove them from the breeder list. How are you mating and summering these 100 queens? In mating nucs or standard nucs? They should all be set up in standard nucs and wintered. Either in yours, WW, or in nucs setup by the beekeepers in your WA and BC clubs. There must be enough folks that can setup and winter a few. Then, teach them how to keep records, and share what you have found.

That all said, you can still do some selection in the first summer. Things like disease present, brood patterns, temper can be looked at the first summer. But a final determination takes longer. You'd be surprised how obvious it is the summer after mating how easy it is to find the exceptional stock you're looking for. The daughters of that queen I used first in 2015 so out shined the daughters of the other 2015 breeders, that I used her again for 2016. Half my new queens came from her in 2016, and I shipped them all over the US. I would be interested to hear back about their performance.


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

Michael Palmer said:


> Been following this thread, so I'll add my thoughts.


Nice write up Mike. Not complicated and very workable.

(what is WW?)


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Western Wilson


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## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

Yes, I am WW. Been pestering Mike with questions.

We have a special issue with our clubs here as we straddle the border and I am on the Canadian side. We are not allowed to move bees across that border. Most of our members are on the USA side, and some are in Pt. Roberts, a peninsula tip you can only get to through Canada. The rest of the USA members are in Bellingham WA. So we are fractured into three separate areas. This severely limits our ability to move bees/share bees/adopt out bees, but the bees can mate in the air and thus mix the different genes we have on each side of that border. 

In addition, the Canadian land prices are now into the stratosphere, and that area is increasingly urbanized. We are guests on the land there, but are working on more secure tenure.

We think we have the drive and commitment to get this all started and set up: something that is not always present in the largest of clubs. So we will just have to do the best with what we have...our finest asset is that we have a great rapport among a nice core of cooperative beekeepers.

Mike, thanks for the comments on the grading...I will revisit that formula with your advice in mind and agree, that temperament certainly gets a queen booted from the program, and disease as well although that is not entirely the fault of the queens... we do have high incidence of area brood disease thanks to high bee density, new beekeepers setting up survivor yards, and unfortunate management of some of the bees brought in every spring for pollination. We have talked for a couple of years about putting on robbing screens while the fields are being pollinated, to prevent drift and attendant disease. This year we will have to do that.

I have certainly noticed those stellar performers in my apiary. We will poll club members to see if anyone has had similar queen experiences, and ask for daughter queens.

But we are not in a position to run out 100 nucs at present, much as we'd like to. We are in the process of discovering just what we can handle, and where. But I do see that grading a queen in her second year would be more informative. We will have to noodle on that one.

Thanks much for all the thought and advice. We are open to all the help and good suggestions.

Regards,
Janet


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

WesternWilson said:


> We have a special issue with our clubs here as we straddle the border and I am on the Canadian side. We are not allowed to move bees across that border. Most of our members are on the USA side, and some are in Pt. Roberts, a peninsula tip you can only get to through Canada. The rest of the USA members are in Bellingham WA. So we are fractured into three separate areas. This severely limits our ability to move bees/share bees/adopt out bees, but the bees can mate in the air and thus mix the different genes we have on each side of that border.



What a hassle. But, you could raise cells in each area and provide them the the club members for making their own nucs...this is an educational project, yes?


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Michael Palmer said:


> As far as mating 100 queens and only attempting to winter 20%, I think that a mistake. You should winter them all, and the following season begin the selection process, looking for reasons to remove them from the breeder list. How are you mating and summering these 100 queens? In mating nucs or standard nucs?


Wintering, and how to, is a climate thing. WW is in Tswassen, so similar climate to mine, a bit warmer as she's a little farther south. In our climate, if you have the resources to mate the queens, then you have the resources to winter them.

A couple years ago I was at the British Columbia Honey Producers AGM, and somewhat intrigued by a presentation from a long time queen producer in the interior of the province, where winters are much colder than they are here. She talked about an experiment they did many years ago, back in the early 90's I believe was the timeframe, they ran an extra late round of cells into the mating nucs. They were using medium depth 4 ways. Instead of catching the queens, they stacked the boxes all into a lean-to for the winter, 250 boxes for a total of a thousand queens. They caught queens out of those boxes in late March or early April. She said survival surpassed expectations by a huge chunk, so much so, they started doing it every year, then about 10 years ago winter caught up with them when the boxes weren't in the lean-to yet. Survival that year was just as good as when they were in the shed, so they stopped doing that too. Then she looked at the crowd and asked 'Do you know how much 700 queens are worth in the first week of April?' and then muttered something about 'Enough to put 2 kids thru university....'

For the last 5 years I have wintered numerous colonies in 5 frame boxes, some single high, some two high. This year I have an experiment running, I built a 4 way out of a deep using half size deep frames, and put 4 young queens to bed in that one this fall, each quarter has 5 half size frames, and I fed them as much as they would stuff into those little combs during late September and early October. Reading this thread got me to wondering, I dont normally look at or open hives this time of year, but I went out this afternoon and checked. That box has bees in all 4 compartments, looks like we still have live queens in all of them. Ask me in March if the experiment turns out to be a success, but so far it's looking good. We are about 6 weeks from first pollen here now, that'll come with the hazelnuts, over the last 3 years its been around Feb 10, and our bees normally have brood at that time.

The bottom line is, in our climate, if you have the resources to mate the queens, you have the resources then to winter them.


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## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

I attended that lecture as well, it was by Liz Huxter in Grand Forks...she gets really cold winters!


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## mbevanz (Jul 23, 2012)

Mike, I have a Caspian marked blue from fall 2016. She is in a box in California. Dark bees.


Michael Palmer said:


> Been following this thread, so I'll add my thoughts.
> 
> I've been selecting breeding stock since the 90s. I have an advantage as I've had between 650 and 800 colonies from which I can choose breeding stock. I also don't requeen by the calendar. I have lots of colonies that haven't bee requeened or propped up in any way for many years....only treated for varroa. In a way, these colonies are self selecting for stock that performs well in my area and under my management. I have a breeder queen that I used in 2015 and 2016. I pulled her from a colony that I set up in 2001. That colony has been a top producer in its yard since setup. Because I keep records on every colony, I can see that colony has never had a drop in annual production...which might be caused by swarming, or queen failure, or poor wintering, or disease, etc. Of course that colony's queen has been superceded a number of times.
> 
> ...


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

Mbvanz; What type of bee is a Caspian?


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## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

Grozzie2, are your 4 ways single high or double? Will be most interested by your report in March, but if the ladies are alive now they should go the distance.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Over wintering in 4 way Medium nucs...wow



WesternWilson said:


> Liz Huxter in Grand Forks


Thanks for the name, interesting stuff
https://vimeo.com/161651142 
she gets in to overwintering the nucs at about 36min, In this talk it sounds like she is keeping them indoors


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

If you like the system Liz shared, it is a common commercial style and Mann Lake sells a modern variation of this. They call them "growing boxes" and "double mating nucs". It is a nice and efficient style for growing and managing resources for nucs. The growing boxes can be separated into mating nucs or you can by the molded double mating nucs.

https://www.mannlakeltd.com/shop-al...een-rearing/nuc-boxes/unassembled-growing-box

https://www.mannlakeltd.com/shop-al...nce/queen-rearing/nuc-boxes/double-mating-nuc


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## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

grozzie2 said:


> Wintering, and how to, is a climate thing. WW is in Tswassen, so similar climate to mine, a bit warmer as she's a little farther south. In our climate, if you have the resources to mate the queens, then you have the resources to winter them.
> 
> A couple years ago I was at the British Columbia Honey Producers AGM, and somewhat intrigued by a presentation from a long time queen producer in the interior of the province, where winters are much colder than they are here. She talked about an experiment they did many years ago, back in the early 90's I believe was the timeframe, they ran an extra late round of cells into the mating nucs. They were using medium depth 4 ways. Instead of catching the queens, they stacked the boxes all into a lean-to for the winter, 250 boxes for a total of a thousand queens. They caught queens out of those boxes in late March or early April. She said survival surpassed expectations by a huge chunk, so much so, they started doing it every year, then about 10 years ago winter caught up with them when the boxes weren't in the lean-to yet. Survival that year was just as good as when they were in the shed, so they stopped doing that too. Then she looked at the crowd and asked 'Do you know how much 700 queens are worth in the first week of April?' and then muttered something about 'Enough to put 2 kids thru university....'
> 
> ...


Thank you for sharing this. This honestly blew my mind. Wow.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

WesternWilson said:


> Grozzie2, are your 4 ways single high or double?


We only did one for this experiment, I may make up a few more if it works out. I started by putting a partition in a standard deep, then made up 20 half size frames for it. We made 4 quarter size inner covers with a screened hole. I did it this way so the whole works will fit under a standard telescoping cover.

When Liz talked about having lots of queens in March, that got me thinking. Almost every year we find a drone layer or two in March, and at that time of year there is no option to find queens here on the island. If I have 3 or 4 spares in the 4 way, I can rescue a colony that would otherwise end up combined with a colony that does have a good queen. When I did it, I wasn't thinking of these as a place to try evaluate queens, just a place to store some live ones over the winter so I have spares in inventory come spring.



JSL said:


> If you like the system Liz shared, it is a common commercial style and Mann Lake sells a modern variation of this.


I looked at the mann lake stuff, but I wasn't to keen on the styro nuc boxes. They only have 3 frames per side, and the feeders separate the colonies. For wintering there wont be any benefit of a shared wall creating what amounts to a single cluster. I just looked at the website again, and they dont have dimensions on any of those, the boxes or the frames. If two of those growing boxes would fit under a standard telescoping cover, it would save a lot of fiddly building.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

I enjoyed watching Liz's video. Interesting stuff. Amazing how similar our setup is. I use 4-ways too, but my thin divider is a moveable feeder. I also use a duplex setup. The duplex boxes fit on top of the 4-way boxes. They can be used that way, or with a follower board inserted they become a 2-way. 

I'll be at the BC meeting on March 11. Maybe I will get to talk to her if she attends, as well as the rest of the BC beekeepers here.


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

grozzie2 said:


> I looked at the mann lake stuff, but I wasn't to keen on the styro nuc boxes. They only have 3 frames per side, and the feeders separate the colonies. For wintering there wont be any benefit of a shared wall creating what amounts to a single cluster. I just looked at the website again, and they dont have dimensions on any of those, the boxes or the frames. If two of those growing boxes would fit under a standard telescoping cover, it would save a lot of fiddly building.


Here is a pic that shows several configurations using the medium boxes like Mann Lake sells. As a single box they are "two way" nucs with four frames on each side of the divider. I run medium nucs and deep nucs like this. For summer work, I prefer the mediums as they are easier and faster to setup and manage. For wintering though I prefer the deep version as I have better wintering success from 4 deep half length frames. A cube just seems to make a better wintering cavity. It doesn't seem to be so much about the heat, or sharing it, but rather the positioning and amount of stores. This is not my design, it is commercial and goes back long before I was born. Happy New Year to everyone!


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Nice pic Joe. 

This is a 4-way that has had the feeders moved to the side walls making it a 2-way with 8 combs and a feed in @. With a duplex box, 10 combs on top. 





















I don't bother wintering 4-ways any more. With more than 600 mating nucs, I don't need all those queens in the spring. Rather sell them in August at a discounted rate so people can have them for requeening. All I really need is enough brood to re-establish all the mating nucs come late May and early June. There is always way more brood than I need, so some of the duplex boxes with queens get used for requeening production colonies. Two duplex boxes (1 queen) on the bottom board beneath the production colony. 

Breaking up the wintered mating nucs a day before cells are ready....come rain or shine. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA3yiNoAh4o


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

Thanks Mike. I agree, most of the nucs are wintered as two story deeps, 20 half frames, or two to three story mediums. They winter best this way in my experience. Brood and bees are not the issue for me in the spring, but rather enough empty comb. I make up the splits with a frame of brood, honey and two empties or foundation. They grow too quickly!

I still winter a fair number of queens on four combs, more for the challenge of it!


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

As to the topic of the thread... I cannot tell much about the quality of a new queen, other than the basics. Does she have 6 legs, look nice, laying nice. Only time will tell if she is a quality queen. For beekeepers that are simply wanting to make up losses or increases. Mating queens in 5 frame nucs and then wintering them is a great way to go.


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## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

grozzie2 said:


> When Liz talked about having lots of queens in March, that got me thinking.


I was stunned when I saw that presentation! And then finding Mike's videos on the sustainable apiary put it all together. Our problem in running a project focused on raising ever better queens was the overwintering piece. Running the queens over winter in nuc setups would allow us, with our limited resources and manpower, to do more in the way of proofing queens. And in the back of our mind is spring nuc sales to subsidize our expenses....our first year startup costs are daunting, and will remain daunting till we learn what setup works best for us.

We have an extra layer of challenge in that the beeyard is guested on land now being developed: while the developer has been encouraging about space for the bees, it is imperative the yard look pristine as possible...first to please our landlord and second to allay fears in the nearby residents. And I have to say, the two of us who are running this project really like tidy, orderly, well set up work environments.

One system we are testing this year is the Paradise Honey double nucs and hives from Finland. The nuc setup is priced competitively with standard wood nuc boxes and is a whole lot easier to assemble. The idea of this very tough, dense polystyrene is that the bees can much more efficiently heat the broodnest...as in an ideal, old and thick tree cavity.


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

I like the polystyrene nucs too, but keep in mind, the smaller the nuc, the more management they require. I like these Tegart Nucs. I initially wintered them in 5 frame singles as the Tegarts do, but I found that I had to be there for food and space. Now I winter them as doubles and they are pretty much management free once I get them set up. Each one has an internal frame feeder so that I can quickly feed if needed. The pics below were taken on a cool October morning if I remember correctly. They are packed with bees and honey!


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## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

JSL said:


> I like the polystyrene nucs too


JSL how do they compare to conventional wood nuc boxes?


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## tpope (Mar 1, 2015)

This thread has given me much to think about. My thanks to those that have shared their how to from their operations.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Michael Palmer said:


> I'll be at the BC meeting on March 11. Maybe I will get to talk to her if she attends, as well as the rest of the BC beekeepers here.


In the 5 years I've been attending those meeings, Liz has always been at the one in Kamloops in March. My wife is the organization secretary so attendance for us is not optional this time around.


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

WesternWilson said:


> JSL how do they compare to conventional wood nuc boxes?


For me, there is no comparison. The polystyrene nucs offer me a lot of flexibility that I could not have with wooden boxes. I prefer the durability of wooden boxes, but I just learn to be a little more careful with the polystyrene. The past three years, 2 really tough winters and one very mild winter, I have averaged about a 7% loss. The polystyrene nucs come through in good shape and ahead of my wooden nucs by a couple of weeks.


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## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

JSL can you expand on what you mean by the pstyrene offering more flexibility?


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

They bend more easily.


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

WesternWilson said:


> JSL can you expand on what you mean by the pstyrene offering more flexibility?


Yep, as Mike noted, they bend more easily. Go easy with the hive tool!

Maybe it is true of most areas, but we get starts and stops when spring rolls around. The polystyrene tends to buffer the temperature swings and the bees roll right along. With internal feeders in place, I can make the rounds with a light syrup in late February and fill feeders. The bees are able to break cluster just fine. Early splits do not suffer as much from the night time lows. I have done some really early splits or packages for feeding trials when temps have dropped into the single digits. Not ideal conditions, but the they did surprisingly well. The extra insulation allows me to get away with things I can't do with my wooden boxes.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Here there are some few breeders that select based on the weight of the virgin queens.

I was at the time to verify the correlation between this variable and the number of ovarioles, and the studies that I acceded are not consensual.

From a personal and practical and rough point of view I evaluate a good queen for what her colony produces.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Of course, colony production is an important part of the selection process. But, the first selection comes when catching the queen after mating. Small queens are culled.


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## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

When I first started making queens as per the instructions of my Journeyman teacher, I was impressed by how much larger the queens were. As Eduardo mentions, research indicates queen size is positively correlated with a high number of ovarioles, which by and large should mean more fecundity. Larger queens are at a minimum at least easier to find on the frames!

BTW has anyone tried the magnetic queen marking disks, which work with a magnetic stylus to pick up queens by the disk. Thought that was kind of clever, if expensive!
https://www.thorne.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=5123


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

I'm 2 blocks from where Mike will be speaking in Kamloops. I have some M. Palmer nucs wintering in my back yard. So if anyone wants to poke their nose into some TF bees in March, weather permitting, if they survive...


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

I agree that one can get caught up in minutia. More important black box characteristics for me are 

1. Winter survival
2. Honey production
3. 2nd year mite survival. 

Meanness, and disease are disqualifiers. 

However, I plan on doing things like mite counts, hygienic brood tests and other measures, not to use them for selection per se, but to document whether important traits are present, and how much these characteristics contribute to hive and apiary population success. With good information I can bring in some interesting genetics that I don't have to increase the local genetic tool kit. 

I have one hive started with a local swarm cell given to me, that has outperformed the more fancy genetics I imported. She has terrible hygienic behaviour but seems to do pretty well TF anyway. I might have made a mistake to disqualify her because of a preconceived idea about what constitutes success.


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## Colobee (May 15, 2014)

WesternWilson said:


> ...BTW has anyone tried the magnetic queen marking disks, which work with a magnetic stylus to pick up queens by the disk. Thought that was kind of clever, if expensive!
> https://www.thorne.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=5123
> View attachment 29786


What a novel Idea! Color coded disks would also be interesting. Assuming, of course, that the primary queen stays put & remains solo. Regardless - a good idea in theory! 'Not hard to replicate with a little ingenuity.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

lharder said:


> I'm 2 blocks from where Mike will be speaking in Kamloops. I have some M. Palmer nucs wintering in my back yard. So if anyone wants to poke their nose into some TF bees in March, weather permitting, if they survive...


Kamloops. Cool. Been to the Okenagan and Vancouver and Port Alberni. Tofino and Ucluelet. And that excellent ice cream cone shop halfway across the island. Never been to Kamloops.

And, how could I forget Dawson Creek in 1970.


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## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

lharder said:


> I'm 2 blocks from where Mike will be speaking in Kamloops. I have some M. Palmer nucs wintering in my back yard. So if anyone wants to poke their nose into some TF bees in March, weather permitting, if they survive...


Count me in! I am going up to Kamloops with beekeeping buddy Barbara and we would both be very interested in seeing how your bees are doing in the MP nucs (we have been calling them Polar Huts). Barbara has bees wintering for the first time at her cabin in the area.


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## texanbelchers (Aug 4, 2014)

Colobee said:


> What a novel Idea! Color coded disks would also be interesting. Assuming, of course, that the primary queen stays put & remains solo. Regardless - a good idea in theory! 'Not hard to replicate with a little ingenuity.


Put a big magnet at the entrance and you could stop swarming... :lookout:


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

Michael Palmer said:


> Kamloops. Cool. Been to the Okenagan and Vancouver and Port Alberni. Tofino and Ucluelet. And that excellent ice cream cone shop halfway across the island. Never been to Kamloops.
> 
> And, how could I forget Dawson Creek in 1970.


Well now that the cat is out of the bag I better register. I have a feeling you are going to be a hot ticket with the keepers here. Another person you may be interested in talking to is Lenard Foster who is doing some real interesting national survey work out of the University of BC (that I was lucky enough to be apart of), and developing some genetic/molecular tools for identifying traits in populations (my best explanation). There may be some neat stuff that comes of it. 

Seems you are well acquainted with BC, and I hope you have a good visit here.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

WesternWilson said:


> Count me in! I am going up to Kamloops with beekeeping buddy Barbara and we would both be very interested in seeing how your bees are doing in the MP nucs (we have been calling them Polar Huts). Barbara has bees wintering for the first time at her cabin in the area.


Maybe PM me. I would be happy to show some fellow keepers what I have tried to do. I have another site where I have 30 overwintered nucs as well.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

I'd like to see that too, if there's time.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

Michael Palmer said:


> I'd like to see that too, if there's time.


I imagine you will be pulled in all directions. But a visit from you would be an honor. I can PM some contact info in case the stars align.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Digging up an old thread on selecting queens. Names removed to protect the guilty. Quotes below, emphasis mine.




Michael Palmer said:


> In a way, these colonies are self selecting for stock that performs well in my area and *under my management*. I have a breeder queen that I used in 2015 and 2016. I pulled her from a colony that I set up in 2001. That colony has been a top producer in its yard since setup. Because I keep records on every colony, I can see that colony has never had a drop in annual production...which might be caused by swarming, or queen failure, or poor wintering, or disease, etc. Of course that colony's queen has been superceded a number of times.





WesternWilson said:


> So one of our challenges is that every year we are *awash in the drones from this year's NZ shipments*.


At the event in Kamloops I had the pleasure of doing dinner one evening with two very long time beekeepers. One of them was discussing his first colony, a swarm capture at age 14, kept in a skep. The other one was emphasizing the quote above regarding selecting from the top producers year over year, and mentioned a trait he considered very important which he coined 'intelligent supercedure'. A colony that just kept on trucking year over year producing a good chunk of honey, never needed to be requeened, and production records suggesting they had not swarmed out. My unspoken thought at the time, do we know they didn't swarm, or if they did swarm out, does it matter ? They still produced honey amongst the top apiary producers ?

One of the questions I was asking everybody at the Kamloops event, where do I got to find 'good queens'. North of the border we cant just pick up the phone and order 'name brand' queens from suppliers we read about here.

We have a tiny operation compared to either of them, and with only 20 colonies to choose from, we dont have the advantage of statistics, ie, amongst 300 or 700 there will always be a few good ones to pick from. But, we have one that has really intrigued me. Started last year from one of those ill famed NZ packages, they started out slow. But, when the spring flow arrived, they built up well, and made a super of honey. Not a spectacular crop, but, they had a huge disadvantage, 1 kilo package started in March, so the flow was on already by the time first brood round emerged, they started from scratch with no brood about the same time the rest of the colonies had first orientation flights happening. My records from that one show, they never stung me once last summer, and I was digging into this one more often than most of them because I was intrigued by the 'nice gentle colony'. This spring, they are the strongest of the lot on our stands out back.

When I described this one, the local guy who started with skeps (long time ago) looked at me and said 'you have a colony that survived thru a fall of endless rain, then a winter of endless snow, with an ice storm and just about everything bad winter has to offer in our area, they made some honey and they didn't sting you, what more do you want ?' The other fella with us, from out of town, looked over and agreed. My only answer to that would be 'but they are NZ queens, they must be bad...'

My own personal mission when we went up to the Kamloops event was to talk to every queen breeder there, and figure out where to go to buy 'good stock'. It was enlightening to say the least, but by the time we left I had the answer to that question. Getting 'good stock' isn't a one time purchase, it's a process that will take a few years. The bees we have make honey, on par with or slightly above everybody else in our area. Our survival isn't as good as I would like to see, but, it's better than the average in our area. When you pay attention to the things the 'pros' are telling us, it's easy to gloss over the most important points, emphasized above. _Under My Management_ in our local area / climate. We aren't going to figure out that part looking at fresh young queens in a mating nuc, that'll only come after they have had a season or more in a hive that we have here for the spring flow, then moved up into the bush for the fall fireweed. If I head off and buy queens from outside, the big question, are they going to do better than what we already have, when handled the same way our existing stuff is handled ?

3 different breeders told me essentially the same thing. If we are doing ok now, dont go outside, graft new queens from the colonies that are doing best for us the way we run them now, and keep records. The most important lesson I took away from the event in Kamloops turns out to be one we have seen written many times here on Beesource. 

Patience Grasshopper.....


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## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

It seems this idea of breeding up good local queens is in the air lately. I spent the winter polling my personal Bee Wizards and prepping for a multi-year queen breeding project, lengthy draft plan available upon request (attachment to this post failed).

I too have had some wonderful colonies out of the NZ girls, Gerry, no question. But in breeding my own queens I noticed that in any given batch, a few were terrible, most were ok, and a few were stellar. When we buy queens chances are slim we are always getting the stellar end of the offerings. And the NZ bees have been found to be lacklustre in dealing with Varroa (Beaverlodge research).

A few things pushed me to move on a queen improvement project...the fact that NZ queens are superceded at a rate of 60% in their first season. Not such a big deal for most of us, just a pain, but for new beekeepers this can be a real setback. They often do not recognize what has happened, but their hive loses steam and for the unlucky, the new queen never makes it home. Every year I do calls to help new beekeepers and always find a few with failed supercedure hives full of laying workers and drone brood.

The others, a big failure of package queens in the USA membership of my club (Mt. Baker/Pt. Roberts), hard on the new beekeepers. And some rumblings about local TF beekeepers wanting to bring in "Africanized" queens in pursuit of Varroa tolerance...into a highly urban landscape. Aggression issues would result in possible injury, possible lawsuits, a mess in the DCA's, and finally bylaws permitting urban beekeeping would be vulnerable to being be rolled back.

We need good, dependable, robust local queens and bees to be widely available.

I am certainly starting with my own bees, which have been selected from my best queens over the last few years. I am bringing in queens of promise...they are out there. But in the end, I will be using as my breeder queens the ones that perform best for me, in my yards. I am looking for good spring buildup, colony vigour and good overwintering. Zero tolerance for snarkiness or disease. We'll monitor Varroa counts but will work on the points mentioned first.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

Not sure I'd call it breeding, but selecting your best performers is a good start. Honestly, it's all about what fits your model of beekeeping and your personal or business goals. I also tend to look at queens longer than I should but I think this approach pays off better as the junk gets weeded out. It's hard on the pocket book though to bring in queens and not get daughters off of them but in the long run it's probably better that way. On the flipside, you never know what you'll get with some hybridity so it's probably more prudent to get a few daughters off everything to evaluate at some point, but time is short and I just can't get everything I want to get done with the bees every year. 

Also, you want queens produced under the most ideal circumstances, I'm really seeing the value in this when overwintering and longevity are looked at.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

WW - I left this one alone because MP said it so eloquently in his post #13 earlier in the thread, but, just to mention, I use PAF = Personal Ancestry File from the Latter Day Saints (Mormon Church) Family history genealogy project. The software is a free download, or bring a flash drive to a genealogy club meeting and they'll give it to you.

It can be used one sided for open-mated queens. I give them names just like people because it makes the software easy to use. I also give them numbers to relate to their trait evaluation sheets.

In evaluations, I give a lot of weight to colony strength before peak nectar flow, and to a colony's ability to respond to our drought and wet year cycle

I wish I was up there to help with making extra boxes, frames, nuc's, and lean-to's, etc., for the project! Good to see a club pulling together like that. My local club is mostly just 1- to 3-colony beekeepers who do it because it's "cool", not serious about stock improvement, therefore little cooperation. They'll show up for Earth Day, but little enthusiasm for a project like you have going, against national boundary issues, no less! Bravo! Your club rocks. :applause:


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## WesternWilson (Jul 18, 2012)

Kilocharlie, Micheal's post was worth re-reading, thanks for reminding me! I am lucky in my club. We have a really nice vibe, we get along well, are civil to each other even when we disagree, and are highly motivated to find what works best in our area so we can all succeed, and pass that along to our new-bees. No bee left behind! I am aware of and thankful for the value of my club members and the resource we create.

We have a fun time and have begun beekeeper dinner nights. Our poor spouses. We try to talk about more than bees...

And any time you are up here, we will put a scraper and paintbrush in your hand! The weather is soooo bad here I have a painting station set up in my tv room, drop cloths all over. My husband is being very saintly. I cannot wait to get all this equipment into the field!


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## Marcin (Jun 15, 2011)

Any updates on the project?

Btw, lots of good info shared in the thread.


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