# How to Increase Success Rate in the Mating Yard?



## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

I work with Mike Palmer at French Hill in Vermont. We're under winter snow here now, and this is the time of year that we talk about ways to improve and make plans for next season.

One of the things we're talking about is how to increase or rate of success in our queen rearing operation. We're not satisfied with our percentages. During our catches, we're finding too many nucs have failed to produce a mated queen. the cells have emerged, but the virgin failed to return after her mating flights. We're marking too many nucs "QL" (for "Queen-Less"

So we're wondering how to get better results. Our mating yard is a single location, with multiple groups of mating nucs arranged in circles. The groups are spread widely apart. We've tried painting entrances in different color patterns, we've tried painting outer covers with high-contrast patterns. There are some landscape features to help the bees orient, such as a notable row of trees, a pond, a road, but it is otherwise wide open and flat. It can get windy.

A link to some photos - a couple of seasons old now, but you get the idea of what we're working with.

Mating Yard — French Hill Apiaries

We're currently using mostly 4-way nuc boxes (Four compartments in a 10 frame deep, each with 4 deep frames cut in half and an entrance on each side of the box). We're looking at building some 2-ways for this season to compare results and see if that improves things.

*What conditions do you feel are key to successful matings?
What do you consider to be an acceptable rate of success in the mating yard?
How many queens do you raise in a season?
How have you managed to raise your success rate?*

We'd like to be consistently over 80%. We've been above that at times, but we're below that too often for our liking and would like to improve.

Adam


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Adam, as a hobbyist, I am almost hesitant to respond. I have also had poor returns on my 4-way mating nucs and did not even use them last year. They are white boxes with a different design painted above the entrance in different colors. The 5 frame nucs on the other hand had very good return rates, at least in the Spring. My concern with the 4-ways is that the queens made it back to the correct hive, but walked into the wrong door. This year I am going to paint each side of the box a different color to see if that improves things. I noticed in your photo that all four sides of your boxes are essentially the same color. Just food for thought.

Let Michael know we would love for him to start posting here again. Graham and I are doing what we can to get rid of the spam.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Wouldnt it be nice to know exactly where the other 20 percent is going. If it is mainly the birds and dragon flys taking their share, then your part of the process may not have much room for improvement.

I have had near 100% return into separate 10 frame boxes and 5 frame nucs but I think I am sitting only a few hundred yards from what could be the best drone congregation area. Google Earth makes it look convincing to me at least. WWW who has not been active here for a while, figured his apiary was the breeding ground for all the Tanagers (or was it Cardinals?) in Ohio) and had dismal results. They were obviously, actively eating his bees!


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Mike Palmer probably knows all of the "tricks" out there, so anything us mere mortals suggest may not be of much interest. That said, I was talking with a long time local beekeeper and he suggested something that hadn't occurred to me and that was to move the mating yard. He suggests moving on an annual schedule, but I suspect that mid-season move might be effective too. Lots of work in mid-season, but it might give you a bump after the "honeymoon" period in the beginning of the season... He claimed that the primary predator was dragonflies. Full disclosure: I have not implemented his suggestions - just throwing it out there.


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## ifixoldhouses (Feb 27, 2019)

I"ve only been doing it 2 years, but I think the bigger the hive is the better, more bees go with the queen and help hide her like a school of fish.


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

This question is on the up and up?

I have had a mating yard I've had to abandon do to insect eating birds taking the queens out. Even the production hives that swarm there now mostly end up queenless.
I use traditional deep frame 2 and 3 frame queen castles and have very good mating success so can't comment on the minis. I ditched mine as too time consuming coupled my dislike of single purpose equipment.

Is this question on the up and up?


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

clyderoad said:


> This question is on the up and up?


Assuming Adam's account has not been hacked, I would say yes. Seriously doubt the folks at French Hill Apiaries have the time or inclination to troll Beesource. 

My answers to the questions posed:
*What conditions do you feel are key to successful matings? *
Early spring before dragonflies become a problem. Dry weather. 
*What do you consider to be an acceptable rate of success in the mating yard?*
80-90% March through June, 50% July/August, 80% September.*
How many queens do you raise in a season?*
Around 40. Mostly for nucs and replacement queens. A few for sale.*
How have you managed to raise your success rate?*
Still working on that one...


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

JWPalmer said:


> Assuming Adam's account has not been hacked, I would say yes. Seriously doubt the folks at French Hill Apiaries have the time or inclination to troll Beesource.


Well, I'd be surprised if those at French hill didn't fall asleep at night contemplating the solution. Just saying.


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## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

Nope, we've not been hacked. I do work for Mike. This will be the 5th season. I see him every day, and believe it or not, Mike still loses sleep over bee puzzles, just as all of us do. 

It's a serious question. We've been talking about the subject for months, and I told him I planned to start a thread here for input. It's always interesting to hear what other beekeepers have learned, as you never know when it will lead to an answer you're looking for.

Back to our discussion:

I'm interested - for those of you who attribute the loss of queens to birds or dragonflies. How do you know? Sure, either could be a factor - and we've discussed those possibilities ourselves - but in a yard of hundreds of nucs - those dragonflies and birds have an awful lot of options when it comes to bees to eat. For my own part, I'd expect one would see a pretty notable number of the culprits around before we should assign significant loss to them.

Adam


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Adam, Astrobee and I both live in southeast Virginia, about 50 miles apart. Dragonflies are a major issue in mid-summer and there will be at least 100 of them at any time in my apiary and surrounding yard, darting about and snatching bees out of the air. I have personally observed them swooping down as soon as I popped an inner cover to make off with a bee in its clutches. Not a big problem when they are grabbing foragers, but when that big juicy slow-moving bee happens to be one's newly mated queen, it is frustrating at the least. European and Bald-faced hornets are minor predators and I do not attribute any queen loss to them. Birds are not a huge problem for me here either because many of the birds in my area are members of the finch family and therefore seed eaters. 

As far as queens entering the wrong hive, I thought it was funny when I observed a returning queen getting chased out of several nucs before she ended up back in what I assume was the correct one*. 

*At least they accepted her.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Adam
IMO if you I would focus on 2 issues

1)Predatation, may need to sit and watch some boxes to see if there are predator's, Observation is really the only way.

2)Returning to the wrong Box. is the box having a "similar" smell out all orfaces?

My side by side Boxes have way lower success rate than the single NUCs

try a batch of singles in the same yard this could rule out getting lost.

best wishes

GG


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## muskrat (Jul 22, 2016)

One of the main foods for the Purple Martin is Dragonflies. I've had housing for them and it's amazing how many dragon flies they consume and feed to their young. Will they eat honey bees? Probably now and then but not that often. They are larger birds that like larger prey. Also, they feed mostly high in the air and seldom close to their houses, except when they are feeding their young and again that food is mostly dragon flies. One more thing, per the Purple Martin Conservation Organization, contrary to popular belief (and contrary to martin housing manufacturers) they don't eat mosquitoes. Not only are they so small they are not worth the trouble for them but mosquitoes are seldom out when the martins are feeding. Honey bees are small also and not a favorite target.
One bird that we're having more and more issues with in Clarksville Va is the "Bee Bird", or the Summer Tanager. These birds have been wreaking havoc on our hives the last 3 years. They are pretty and look almost like a Cardinal so a lot of beekeepers pay them no mind, however they will sit in a tree close to the hives or even on the hives and eat and eat and eat, removing the heads of the bees and eating the body. Not a pretty site, especially when their young hatch.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

My very small-scale, anecdotal observation is that my queen castles have far less success than my 3-frame, stand-alone mating nucs. Thinking about not even using queen castles this season.


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

A couple of thoughts. Is 80% not good? I'm not at 80% after doing the math over the last few years, more like consistently 70%. From some of what I've read 75% seems like a favorable return for some in northern climates. I'm not certain better than 80% can be achieved consistently, are you?
The other thing I neglected to mention when I spoke of bird predation is to try a more protected mating yard. Calmness seems to increase returns as any mating yard I've set up near the coast and was subjected to 'sea breezes' had consistently lower returns than more central locations that do not get windy every afternoon.
I still question whether 80% return is underperforming.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

muskrat said:


> One bird that we're having more and more issues with in Clarksville Va is the "Bee Bird", or the Summer Tanager. These birds have been wreaking havoc on our hives the last 3 years. They are pretty and look almost like a Cardinal so a lot of beekeepers pay them no mind, however they will sit in a tree close to the hives or even on the hives and eat and eat and eat, removing the heads of the bees and eating the body. Not a pretty site, especially when their young hatch.
> View attachment 61966


 Yes, Muskrat, that is the bird that WWW from Ohio had the problem with. Exactly the behavior he described!


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

Seems like it's the swifts that ruin a good mating yard here.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Thanks for the tip on the purple martins. My brother had several nesting pairs when he lived in Hampton, so I knew that mosquitos were not a food source, but did not know that dragonflies were. Time to hang some gourds.


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## muskrat (Jul 22, 2016)

For sure!! We moved to Clarksville and haven't been able to draw any here yet due to the small lot we have, but we had 10 to 15 mating pair where we moved from. Dragon fly eating machines. After the first week or so after hatching about all you would see them bring into the nests were the dragon flies, and big horse flies. The years we had martins the horses loved it!


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## DanielD (Jul 21, 2012)

I would say my main component in queen success is weather. Last year I had very good success, maybe 9 out of 10, while the year before I think I had 90% failure. The weather would get cool and wet every time I had queens ready to mate. 

I had one hive that went nowhere and I could not get a queen mated out if it after a few tries. There also was a brown thrasher in that corner of the garden all year long. Not very scientific, but I have a hunch what was going on. 

When I first moved here the dragonflies were everywhere. After a couple years I noticed an increase in tree swallows and barn swallows hear and now there are a lot of them. Also there are very few dragonflies around. I am thinking the tree swallows eat bees, but I am sure they eat up all the dragonflies, so I have a bit of conflict whether I want them around or not.


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## JConnolly (Feb 21, 2015)

Like JWPalmer, I'm just a hobby beek so what do I know. I need to get my grafting success rate up before I start worrying about mating returns. But would the mating nuc elevation help? It looks like from the picture most of them are near the ground, would elevating some of them to between 3' and 4' help the queens find their way home? I'm only suggesting it because I have a high garden veggie stand that I've taken to putting some of my mating nucs on (I use both four color quad minis blue,green,yellow,white sides and 2 frame, also different colors). I don't have enough experience to say whether that helps her find her way home or not, it's just an idea that might help with with adjacent 4-ways, one low and one high.


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## Murdock (Jun 16, 2013)

I try to open mate 4 or 5 queens every year for replacements and nucs. Last year it was a hurricane coming thru at mating time and early May seems to be the better month. I have dragon flies but I have a lot of lizards that keep the ground cleaned. Brown skinks and anole lizards. The anole may be too small for flying bees but the brown lizards get big; 5" long bodies 1 1/2 " wide. I shoot them with a BB gun.


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## Boxelder (Sep 16, 2017)

ifixoldhouses said:


> I"ve only been doing it 2 years, but I think the bigger the hive is the better, more bees go with the queen and help hide her like a school of fish.


This is a question that deserves more attention. I have read as well, that the larger the hive the more bees will fly along with her on the mating flight. The suggestion was that the resulting queen is more likely to be well mated, as well as likely to make it back. (See pg 12 of this publication by Wally Shaw https://www.wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Simple-methods-of-making-Increase-Final-reduced1.pdf )

Intuitively, that makes sense. Think about a feral hive that sends out a swarm every year, and then waits for a virgin queen to emerge and mate. Why would that hive risk everything on the success of that mating flight if it could reduce risk by protecting the virgin? If I recall correctly, isn't Tom Seeley reporting an average of a five year survival rate for the feral bees in the Arnot Forest? If those bees in the Arnot Forest send out a swarm every year, and the virgin queen has an 80% chance of a successful mating flight, the odds of her managing to do that every for four years is .8 x .8 x.8 x.8 = 41%. I'm not a statistician, but wouldn't you expect the odds for the AVERAGE to be 50%? Something seems a little off...and that's not even accounting for all the other factors that can bring a hive down besides failure of queen mating.

Just a thought


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

In Leonard Snelgrove's original book on the double screen division board he details door manipulation prior to the mating flight of the virgin queen in such a way that older flying bees are bled off so they wont accompany the queen on her virgin flight. This to reduce the chance of a virgin queen swarm event. Such swarms are prone to getting lost. 

It is possible this applies more to the british black bee than to Italians or Carnies but he felt it worth noting. I certainly dont know how the dice falls on this but it does seem to fly in the face of thinking an accompanying flottilla with the virgin to be desireable. Predators may have been a different issue for Snelgrove than it is for Palmer in Vermont. ~!


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Boxelder said:


> This is a question that deserves more attention. I have read as well, that the larger the hive the more bees will fly along with her on the mating flight. The suggestion was that the resulting queen is more likely to be well mated, as well as likely to make it back. (See pg 12 of this publication by Wally Shaw https://www.wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Simple-methods-of-making-Increase-Final-reduced1.pdf )
> 
> Intuitively, that makes sense. Think about a feral hive that sends out a swarm every year, and then waits for a virgin queen to emerge and mate. Why would that hive risk everything on the success of that mating flight if it could reduce risk by protecting the virgin? If I recall correctly, isn't Tom Seeley reporting an average of a five year survival rate for the feral bees in the Arnot Forest? If those bees in the Arnot Forest send out a swarm every year, and the virgin queen has an 80% chance of a successful mating flight, the odds of her managing to do that every for four years is .8 x .8 x.8 x.8 = 41%. I'm not a statistician, but wouldn't you expect the odds for the AVERAGE to be 50%? Something seems a little off...and that's not even accounting for all the other factors that can bring a hive down besides failure of queen mating.
> 
> Just a thought


re:
" If those bees in the Arnot Forest send out a swarm every year, and the virgin queen has an 80% chance of a successful mating flight, the odds of her managing to do that every for four years is .8 x .8 x.8 x.8 = 41%. I'm not a statistician, but wouldn't you expect the odds for the AVERAGE to be 50%? Something seems a little off...and that's not even accounting for all the other factors that can bring a hive down besides failure of queen mating. "

the math would hold for 1 virgin, in most swarm scenarios there are several.

AKA after swarms

GG


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## ffrtsaxk (Jul 17, 2017)

Yes, purple martins eat honey bees. I have watched it happen many times. My neighbor has lots of purple martin houses, so I have a resident population. They will flock outside the window where I have my large observation hive and pick them off. I had a queen leave for a mating flight one day when the purple martins were eating bees and she never returned.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

First off, I have a saying, “in queen matings 90% is 100%“, meaning that’s about the best anyone can reasonably do unless you are giving them a month for any second catches to occur. I don’t think you mentioned what you find in those that miss. Have they raised another virgin? If so, the problem would either be with the quality of the cell or the temperament of the bees at the time of cell installation. Given that qc’s have the “canary in the coal mine” ability to show a problem in the hive (a sniff of EFB?) you may have a few cells that just aren’t healthy enough to develop properly. If they appear hopelessly queenless then the problems lie in the mating process which could be anything from orientation, to a poor drone supply or, yes, even predators. Frankly I’ve never been convinced that predators could be a major factor but all beekeeping is local so I could be wrong on that. 
From what I know about Mr. Palmer, he’s probably doing a bang up job on orientation and drone supply so I’d scratch those off the list. Weather? I’m sure you are watching when the windy days occur in regards to when matings flights take place so I’ll scratch that off the list as well. That dosent leave us with much more than the predator theory and the natural inclination for some queens to get injured or disoriented and lost despite our best efforts. 
We do matings with nucs in many locations down south each spring. My observation is that some yards just historically mate better than others for reasons I can only guess at. One interesting case was a location that seemed ideal, strung out along a long fence line with numerous trees and shrubs interspersed for natural orientation. It caught horribly several years in a row. We moved it one year to a new spot only a few hundred feet away and our mating success improved dramatically. Unfortunately we lost the location the next year so we were never able to see if we could repeat that success. 
So for all my rambling I can only suggest, perhaps doing some trials on other locations and just stick to the fundamentals. Some areas may just be better for raising queens than others and you may never understand why.


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## Akademee (Apr 5, 2020)

This is great, I am very interested in this topic as my queen mating success rate is literally in the single digit percents most years in my apiaries


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## Boxelder (Sep 16, 2017)

Gray Goose said:


> re:
> 
> 
> the math would hold for 1 virgin, in most swarm scenarios there are several.
> ...


Yes, but don't most of the afterswarms with virgin queens leave the hive pretty immediately? My impression was that, by the time the virgin was mature enough for a mating flight, that she was the only queen left in the hive. But, now I am wondering if that is incorrect?


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## mgolden (Oct 26, 2011)

Jim Lyon, do you run 4-way mating NUCs or singles?


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

mgolden said:


> Jim Lyon, do you run 4-way mating NUCs or singles?


Nucs started in singles, typically with 3 frames of brood. We scatter to the point that it looks like the forklift operator would never pass a sobriety test.


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## mgolden (Oct 26, 2011)

Thanks, I suspect there is a correlation between singles and newly mated queens getting back to the correct mating NUC/NUC/hive.


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## RayJohnson (Nov 12, 2020)

Adam Foster Collins said:


> I work with Mike Palmer at French Hill in Vermont. We're under winter snow here now, and this is the time of year that we talk about ways to improve and make plans for next season.
> 
> One of the things we're talking about is how to increase or rate of success in our queen rearing operation. We're not satisfied with our percentages. During our catches, we're finding too many nucs have failed to produce a mated queen. the cells have emerged, but the virgin failed to return after her mating flights. We're marking too many nucs "QL" (for "Queen-Less"
> 
> ...


Do you have a designated drone yard With your own stock? I’m starting with queens for the first time this year but don’t have the cash for anything fancy so I’m going with my 5 frame Nucs and several 2 frame nucs I bought brand new from someone that gave it all up.


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## Struttinbuck (Mar 8, 2020)

ifixoldhouses said:


> I"ve only been doing it 2 years, but I think the bigger the hive is the better, more bees go with the queen and help hide her like a school of fish.


They should bring in a hive with alot of drone comb maybe. Just flood the place with drones. Or a few hives with them.


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## ToddFiala (Dec 23, 2010)

Adam Foster Collins said:


> I work with Mike Palmer at French Hill in Vermont. We're under winter snow here now, and this is the time of year that we talk about ways to improve and make plans for next season.
> 
> One of the things we're talking about is how to increase or rate of success in our queen rearing operation. We're not satisfied with our percentages. During our catches, we're finding too many nucs have failed to produce a mated queen. the cells have emerged, but the virgin failed to return after her mating flights. We're marking too many nucs "QL" (for "Queen-Less"
> 
> ...


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## ToddFiala (Dec 23, 2010)

I have had nearly 100% at one location and 50% in another, and somewhere in between that percentage at other locations all in the same batch and all within 15 miles of each other. For me it seems to be just a chance thing. I have had just as good of luck with 4 way queen castles as with 5 frame nucs. Heck, when I have had more queen cells than nuc boxes, I have had good success with splitting a two story 10 frame hive by putting a honey super, queen excluder and an inner cover on top of the bottom ten frame with the queen, and then having a queenless ten frame on the top with a top entrance in the opposite direction of the bottom entrance, with the queen cell in the queenless top hive body. I should note I have queen excluders above and below the honey super to prevent a queen from laying in it. So it goes like this, ten frame deep with a queen, queen excluder, honey super, queen excluder, inner cover to keep queen pheromone out of the top hive body, ten frame deep with a queen cell, top entrance in opposite direction from bottom. East on one side and West on the other seems to work best. I hope this makes sense. If I still have too many queen cells, I give the extras to other beekeepers for free. My bee genetics are mostly Russians from Coy Bee Company, and I want my neighbors to have Russian genes as well, so that is why I give neighbors free queen cells.


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## AmyBeekeeper (Jun 21, 2018)

JWPalmer said:


> “Birds are not a huge problem for me here either because many of the birds in my area are members of the finch family and therefore seed eaters.”


Just as an FYI, nearly all altricial Passerine birds feed their young insects regardless of what the adults eat... so your seed eating birds still catch huge numbers of insects for their young.


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## rkereid (Dec 20, 2009)

Adam Foster Collins said:


> *What conditions do you feel are key to successful matings?
> What do you consider to be an acceptable rate of success in the mating yard?
> How many queens do you raise in a season?
> How have you managed to raise your success rate?*
> Adam


Hey Adam- The challenge here is coming up with some new reason or idea why this happens, when you guys have been mulling this for a while. And I know, as someone mentioned here, you all are going to sleep and waking with the problem swirling around your heads. 

I may not be remembering correctly, but I remember some individual circles would have much lower takes than others in the same catch area on the same catch day. We'd finish one circle with a high number of QLs, and others in the same catch area would have much better returns. Is that an orientation problem, or a hang out for dragonflies or birds? I wouldn't think so because the distance between circles isn't so great that either of those predators wouldn't already be there.

If I try to get queens mated before May 1 in my area, the returns are often well below 80%. The weather seems to stabilize for us around the first of May with milder nights and early spring starting to settle in. After May 1, I routinely get 90%+ with my small batches. I only rear 150-200 queens in May and June most years. 

My area consists of woods and pasture, and it's hilly with hollows and ridges all around, there are very few large flat open areas, or broad valleys. So there are lots of landmarks for orientation. I only have two mating yards. One is higher density consisting of up to 190 mating nucs and overwintered nucs and about a dozen production and cell builder hives. The second mating yard has between 45 and 60 mating nucs and a few overwintered nucs. 90% of my nucs are five frame and the rest are four frame side by side which I'm sure you're familiar with . Both yards have pretty high density with most hives within inches to a few feet from others. They're not spread out as much as Mike's mating yards. Almost all of them have painted shapes and colors on the front above the entrance making each nuc look different. I did this because I had left over spray paint and decided on a lark to just try to create a visual marker.

We do have a lot of resident birds, especially in the spring and summer. Those include Eastern Phoebe, Great Crested Flycatcher, Eastern Kingbird, catbirds, and many others that are insect consumers. I figure they get plenty of bees and occasionally a queen, but I don't believe they get enough for me to worry about. We're not near any bodies of water other than a few creeks here and there, so we don't see so many dragonflies.

Was the Dekker mating yard better? I guess it hasn't been used for a couple or three years.

I'm really amazed most years at the high number of successful matings in my densely populated yards, especially after first of May. I always wonder how do those queens find their hive out of all those boxes?

Not sure that's much help. Stay warm.


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

Adam Foster Collins said:


> Nope, we've not been hacked. I do work for Mike. This will be the 5th season. I see him every day, and believe it or not, Mike still loses sleep over bee puzzles, just as all of us do.
> 
> It's a serious question. We've been talking about the subject for months, and I told him I planned to start a thread here for input. It's always interesting to hear what other beekeepers have learned, as you never know when it will lead to an answer you're looking for.
> 
> ...


Hello Adam, I visited you guys with Pat Bono NYBW in 2017 or 18? Not sure which year. I know we have one day apart bdays. Anyway, I am sure that you guys read/viewed Roger Patterson’s talk on what is happening with our queens on the National Honey Show UK 



 and Clarence Collison 



 Those videos are good food for thought as well as poor nutrition for the bees so maybe poor queens. I remember Randy O. saying he found that pollen has lost about 30% of its nutrition compared with pollen from years ago. With the current “naturalization“ efforts maybe there are more birds eating a nice fat queen. Weather I have found had a big impact on my bees. Like suggested above, find some DCA around you, or switch a yard (or half a yard) and monitor that way. Have different crops been planted in those farm areas around you? Then you could be dealing with pesticide or herbicide. Deb
And to tell the truth 80% doesn’t sound too bad.






CATCH THE BUZZ- Secret Reproductive Lives of Honey Bees | Bee Culture







www.beeculture.com


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## jrtrapper (May 2, 2008)

Adam,
Is this problem variable from year to year?
We too had a horrible year with queen returns in Maine last summer.
Only 60% return.
2019 90% return in the same mating yards.
3 way mating boxes here.


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## LarryBud (Jul 19, 2020)

For all practical purposes, I'm a newbee and I'm sure most of you have forgotten more than I know but.... This past weekend, I had a very long and extremely interesting phone call with another member of this Forum regarding VSH and related queen breeding. (He is a certified master beekeeper and raises VSH Queens). The long and short of it is I had asked, and he concurred (I believe) that, with the industrialization of beekeeping over the last hundred years or so, certain traits, such as a higher level of hygienic behavior, has been bred out of the bees in favor of what was (at the time) more desirable traits such as propagation and honey production. I would think that while changes (like jrtapper) in returns over year to year could be related to seasonal/weather variations or other short term factors but if this is specific to a larger operation such as Michael's and is an ongoing (multi year) issue, there might be something along the lines of genetic commonalities or bluntly, in-breeding playing a factor here. I have heard more than once that once you have bees, if your successful and follow the rules, you'll never have to buy bees again (meaning you're splitting, raising queens etc. but from a common gene pool). The question might be, not just for large apiaries like Michael's, are you blending in new genetic lines by adding new queens or are you relying on some open mating which may or may not come from your current line of bees? Is this widespread with larger operations? It appears to me, looking at some recent threads on buying bees for the upcoming season, they're all coming from larger breeders after the almond or oranges, run through a big screening operation, dumped in a box shipped out by Speedy Delivery and thrown in a box in somewhere to fly around and hopefully make it through winter. Are we flooding the countryside with a much smaller gene pool that we realize? With larger operations, do they routinely bring in bees from another area in sufficient quantities to actually add new genetic character? 

Hey, I'm still new at this so have at it-


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

AmyBeekeeper said:


> Just as an FYI, nearly all altricial Passerine birds feed their young insects regardless of what the adults eat... so your seed eating birds still catch huge numbers of insects for their young.


Did not know that. Not really a bird guy.


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## Sunrise777 (Nov 25, 2020)

90% take on this video, fast forward to minute 13:40 he explains how.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

When responding to this thread, remember to whom we are talking. Adam and the good people at French Hill Apiaries are NOT hobbyists. They are serious commercial beekeepers with years of queen breeding experience.


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## Sunrise777 (Nov 25, 2020)

JWPalmer said:


> When responding to this thread, remember to whom we are talking. Adam and the good people at French Hill Apiaries are NOT hobbyists. They are serious commercial beekeepers with years of queen breeding experience.


I'm sorry, I'm trying to delete it but it I can't figure out how.


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## oldsap (May 1, 2016)

We use 4 ways mini nucs and 4 frame nuc boxes with a division board, 2 frames then expand as they build. 80 percent sounds average. Better weather helps. 
Curious if you are certain the queen cells are all viable? We intend to candle all of the queen cells this year to be certain they are viable.
It seems the cells are chewed out correctly but I am not certain bees will only open a queen cell in the side.


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

To discern if it is 4-way mating box versus a stand alone box problem; Instead of introducing a new box into the operation, would it be possible for MP to repurpose some of the 4 frame deep nuc bodies he uses from the brood factories as individual 2 frame mating nucs - with 2 undrawn frames to fill out the space? 
Then all he would have to decide is what the simplest inner/outer cover and bottom board to make to fit them. My preference is for painted styrofoam outer covers, protected from bee chewing by plastic or feed bag inner covers.


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## oldsap (May 1, 2016)

Our 4 ways did really well last year. Year before I don't know why not as well. The reason we used a division board instead of empty frames was weather related, it snowed here May 11th and 12th when we were putting our mating nucs together. Plus it allowed us to use less resourses.


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

Adam, It is difficult to say what might help your situation. I think you said the cells emerged. Do you check them right after emergence? As Jim mentioned, EFB can cause real problems, especially if it is a very low underlying infection. It can be almost undetectable except for a cell or two in the cell builders, but cause a real drop in queen cell viability. Unlike BQCV, EFB does not change the outward appearance of the queen cell all that much. Assuming cells are fine, single nucs and 2-ways generally yield higher success rates. I do see some 4-ways in commercial operations, but most of the larger operations I see use singles or 2-ways. There is just something about that 4-way box.... Generally, your first catch rate is highest, then lessens with each subsequent catch. Some of that appears to be seasonal conditions and some of it appears to be colony conditions. One thing that has greatly helped me over the years is "weakening" the nuc after catching a queen. This will have to be suited to your needs, but for a 4 frame nuc, I will generally set it back to 1 or 1.5 frames of brood and bees before adding the second cell. If you can't remove frames of brood and bees then removing the bees is second best. My speculation as to why this helps is that bees tend to badger queens to leave the nuc for their mating flight. Small nucs can become very crowded and there seems to be a conflict between sending the queen on a mating flight or swarming. Either way, queens in such conditions seem to endure some extra abuse. Weaker nucs, ones that fill about 25-35% of their space, still have room to grow and behave themselves.


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## GregH (Aug 4, 2016)

I do not raise near the queens you all do, I raise about 100 a year. I have found that I have better luck with my mating nucs scattered under fairly dense trees. The ones I have out in the open areas seem to have a lower returns.


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## oldsap (May 1, 2016)

100 or so is all we do. With full time jobs that is enough. I have see some of the southern queen producers have their mating nucs among the trees. Trouble is here everything needs to be inside an electric fence or building - bears. We do have better returns near our orchard and think we might scatter the nucs among the trees there with more fencing.


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## Ellis23car (Nov 7, 2020)

Adam Foster Collins said:


> I work with Mike Palmer at French Hill in Vermont. We're under winter snow here now, and this is the time of year that we talk about ways to improve and make plans for next season.
> 
> One of the things we're talking about is how to increase or rate of success in our queen rearing operation. We're not satisfied with our percentages. During our catches, we're finding too many nucs have failed to produce a mated queen. the cells have emerged, but the virgin failed to return after her mating flights. We're marking too many nucs "QL" (for "Queen-Less"
> 
> ...


Adam, You ask some great questions. I have been raising queens for over 40 years both in Maine & now in North Carolina. Here are my thoughts.

*What conditions do you feel are key to successful matings? *Weather... best results come from 75+ degrees & little wind. Orientation of mating nucs - I always have each nuc near some type of structure (tree or bush with different color nucs). and off the ground.

*What do you consider to be an acceptable rate of success in the mating yard? * 80 t0 90% my experience less than 75% is a weather issue, old worker bees in nucs or poor quality queen cells.

*How many queens do you raise in a season? *At this time I only raise around a 100 per season.

*How have you managed to raise your success rate?* I have found upper entrances, getting the mating nucs off the ground as well as feeding nucs when putting in cells improve acceptance, along with marking the nucs with colors or shapes.

I use both 2-way & 4-way half deep frame mating nucs. Starting using the syrofoam mini-nucs with aboutt the same success rate. It is hard to find the "Goldilocks" spot. I am still trying to determine how keep the bee population and feed at right levels to get 3 queen cycles with them. I hope this helps, good luck with your 2021 season.

Dave


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## oldsap (May 1, 2016)

I agree with feeding nucs especially when any nectar flow is in question. I think that is why most first round queen returns are better, peak nectar flow, peak pollen diversity.


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## calkal (Feb 2, 2019)

Ellis23car said:


> old worker bees in nucs


 Starting my 4th season but did mange to graft 300 cells last year and had about a 75% take overall. 
This could be a real issue for many of us because sometimes we break up a full size colony into nucs and then all the old workers are present and if the old workers have no colony to fly back to there will be lots of them in the newly made nucs. I think I made this mistake last year.
But it can happen in another way also, even if we are using brood factories to make the nucleus colonies like I plan to this summer. If the nucleus colonies are made up in the brood factory yard and but then whisked off to the mating yard the old worker bees may not have sufficient time to fly back to their original colony and thereby could end up with lots of old workers in the nucs.
It can probably happen in other ways too such as giving a nucleus colony a shake of bees to beef it up.


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## calkal (Feb 2, 2019)

calkal said:


> a 75% take overall.


Meant to say mated queen success rate.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

JSL said:


> This will have to be suited to your needs, but for a 4 frame nuc, I will generally set it back to 1 or 1.5 frames of brood and bees before adding the second cell. If you can't remove frames of brood and bees then removing the bees is second best. My speculation as to why this helps is that bees tend to badger queens to leave the nuc for their mating flight. Small nucs can become very crowded and there seems to be a conflict between sending the queen on a mating flight or swarming. Either way, queens in such conditions seem to endure some extra abuse. Weaker nucs, ones that fill about 25-35% of their space, still have room to grow and behave themselves.


Very interesting JSL! I'm going to give this approach a try this season.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

At my old house I was getting 80% or better take on virgins getting mated. At my current house it is much lower. Probably below 50%. I've experimented with many things that were working at the old location to see if it would make any difference and really havn't noticed much difference. For instance, I've tried spreading mating nucs out and stacking them up to take up less space with no significant difference. In previous years I've had a mixture of shade and sun and that didn't seem to make much difference except last summer when it stayed really hot all summer and the ones in the shade were doing better. I suspect it may have something to do with dragonflies or swallows or maybe some other insect eating the queens when they go out to mate. But I really don't have any theory for which I have any evidence. My conclusion is that it may be something simple or something really complex, but location is the only thing that seemed to make the difference. I just don't know what is different about the location. Both were surrounded by corn fields. Both had a creek nearby. Nothing stands out as different to me. So maybe I should just experiment with locations, but having the mating nucs in my home yard is the most convenient for me...


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## oldsap (May 1, 2016)

We have better success now we moved our mating area about a 1/4 mile from our main apiary. I think the distance helps keep the nuc from being feeders for production colonies. Still close to home, just across the road. I agree closeness is important after work my wife and I do something bee related nearly everyday.


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

Adam Foster Collins said:


> Nope, we've not been hacked. I do work for Mike. This will be the 5th season. I see him every day, and believe it or not, Mike still loses sleep over bee puzzles, just as all of us do.
> 
> It's a serious question. We've been talking about the subject for months, and I told him I planned to start a thread here for input. It's always interesting to hear what other beekeepers have learned, as you never know when it will lead to an answer you're looking for.............


Have you guys come to any conclusions or settled on a new course of action?


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## aran (May 20, 2015)

psm1212 said:


> My very small-scale, anecdotal observation is that my queen castles have far less success than my 3-frame, stand-alone mating nucs. Thinking about not even using queen castles this season.


yup i agree with this although i find queen castles a quick place to chuck extra cells without using up a ton of resources


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

I am in the process of reading L. L. Langstroth's "Hive and the Honey Bee". Even though it was originally written in 1878, Rev. Langstroth identifies queens entering the wrong hive as the largest source of queen loss.



> "On leaving their hive, they fly with their heads turned towards it, often entering and departing several times, before they finally soar into the air. Such precautions on the part of a young queen are necessary, that she may not, on her return, lose her life, by attempting, through mistake, to enter a strange hive. More queens are thus lost than in any other way"


I am becoming increasingly convinced that the queen castle is not a good choice for use as a mating nuc.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

JWPalmer said:


> I am in the process of reading L. L. Langstroth's "Hive and the Honey Bee". Even though it was originally written in 1878, Rev. Langstroth identifies queens entering the wrong hive as the largest source of queen loss.
> 
> 
> 
> I am becoming increasingly convinced that the queen castle is not a good choice for use as a mating nuc.


JWP,

good book it was the only One I had for the first 15 years or so.

I did the 2 queen setup in there for a few years, and now often have a queen coasting on top of a hive some where as a replacement.

enjoy it

GG


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Not to go too far off topic, but there is a wealth of information in this book that I thought was much more recent in it's discovery and application.


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## Gino45 (Apr 6, 2012)

JWPalmer said:


> I am becoming increasingly convinced that the queen castle is not a good choice for use as a mating nuc.


I agree. I have consistently had better queen mating success with 1--stand alone nucs and 2-full size frame nucs.

Why one doesn''t always get the same results depends a lot on weather and food supply for the bees. These vary year to year and week to week.

Another issue is location. Some locations just don't have the same mating results as others.

As to the statement of 80% success rate, that is a very good .percentage.


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## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

Thanks everyone, for your thoughtful replies.

We just finished making 75 2-way mating nucs, which we have painted with patterns so that no two are exactly alike. We feel that the 4-ways are the most likely issue, along with a lack of larger landmarks in the wide open field. To aid with the second issue, we're planning to add some sort of tall markers in the yards as well and we'll compare.

When I had finished painting nucs, and the colors and patterns were all over the shop, Mike laughed and said, "It's going to look like Disneyland at the mating yard this year. People are going to think we're crazy." Then he paused and said, "Good."

I post pictures on Instagram @vermont.bees if you're interested.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Adam Foster Collins said:


> Thanks everyone, for your thoughtful replies.
> 
> We just finished making 75 2-way mating nucs, which we have painted with patterns so that no two are exactly alike. We feel that the 4-ways are the most likely issue, along with a lack of larger landmarks in the wide open field. To aid with the second issue, we're planning to add some sort of tall markers in the yards as well and we'll compare.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the update Adam,

please in Aug after done with mating post your opinion if this helped.

tall markers, maybe 55 gal drums painted differently

GG


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## username00101 (Apr 17, 2019)

Different locations seem to have different rates of success, and I cannot understand the reason. 

Same equipment same everything, one yard will have 75% success, the other will have 95% success.

Needless to say, you can imagine which yard I choose to mate queens.

I know that feeling of losing a swarm and realizing the colony now has a 1/3 probability of failing.


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

Having read all of the posts, I'm pretty sure my problem is predators. I have SWARMS of dragon flies, and many birds that I see picking off bees. My hives are 8 feet apart, alternating facing north and south. So entrances facing the same direction are 16 feet apart. My nucs are spread out in pairs, again facing in opposite directions. I'm lucky if I get to 50% returning from their mating flight. I don't think there is much else I can do. I don't try to raise a lot of queens, so I'm not in control on when they go on flights. Usually caused by a swarm. I'm open to any other suggestions.... I will try to raise some queens this year in early spring to see if I get a better return rate before the dragon flies get so thick. 
Thanks for all the great info.


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## Bdfarmer555 (Oct 7, 2015)

Adam, i am primarily a crop farmer, but there are some larger commercial yards scattered through the area I thought would provide enough drones. I tried for about 3 years to raise a few queens (10-20 for about 6 weeks at a time). Success was usually 90-100% or 25-30%. Tried stronger nucs, different orientations, etc. Finally decided it was related to when we began working fields. At first I thought it might've been "burndown" chems, maybe the smell disoriented queens or caused the hive to reject them upon return. But it was even an issue when we had years where spraying was isolated because tillage was preferred. 

I think there are a ton of factors, but I think, for me, the quickly changing spring landscape was a primary factor for the different return levels. 

Just maybe something you hadn't thought of, I know y'all have some yards around corn fields.


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## username00101 (Apr 17, 2019)

Quickly changing landscape isn't something I had considered, perhaps Bdfarmer is correct. The location with 95% success has a non-changing landscape.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Not to throw a bucket of cold water on this theory, but does the landscape, specifically the four or five landmarks the bees use to find their way home, change that much during the two to three days days that the queen might be making her mating flights? Just throwing it out there as I have no idea the true reason that so many queens fail to make it back as the season progresses.

I am also curious whether putting a lot of mating nucs in the same yard with the queens all maturing at the same time might be a part of the problem. Could they be being fanned into the wrong hive by bees looking for their own queen?


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## Bdfarmer555 (Oct 7, 2015)

JWPalmer said:


> Not to throw a bucket of cold water on this theory, but does the landscape, specifically the four or five landmarks the bees use to find their way home, change that much during the two to three days days that the queen might be making her mating flights? Just throwing it out there as I have no idea the true reason that so many queens fail to make it back as the season progresses.
> 
> I am also curious whether putting a lot of mating nucs in the same yard with the queens all maturing at the same time might be a part of the problem. Could they be being fanned into the wrong hive by bees looking for their own queen?


It does there a time my farm. When the time is right, we turn 150 acres a day from blooming henbit to turned topsoil. A sprayer application of gramoxone can turn the same henbit to dried up dead debris in 24 hrs, at the rate of up to 1500 acres/day. 

Thinking more about this subject, years ago I saw a documentary once regarding wasps and how they use a bright or shiny object as a "lighthouse" of sorts. After seeing this, I watched a few wasps returning to their nests. There on the farm, many would fly to something like an aluminum irrigation fitting before flying straight to the nest. I found that often I could move that object 4-5' and it would confuse them. After a bit, I could dispatch the nest with only 1-2 wasps left, rather than take on the entire horde. 

So I wonder if placing shiny objects near the mating nucs would help as well?


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Ya got me there. A terragator loaded with gramoxone can turn a lot of green acres brown overnight.


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## mgolden (Oct 26, 2011)

Watch the Ian Steppler interview with Bob Binnie that was posted a few days ago. The interview is a very good listen. I don't have time to listen again as I am on a painting crew for our Seniors building.

Bob puts his Nucs. preferably on top of a double deep with a side entrance on double screen board. The height plus the side entrance(away from the side with the main hive entrance) results in significant improvement in successful queen mating.


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

Well in my case, while I have only 80 acres, the closest ag field is a mile away and most are over 2 miles away. I'm surrounded on all four sides by pine trees, the closest blacktop road is 400 yards north of my property. My landscape changes very little, if at all. I do plow and plant 5 acres in the fall for deer but it doesn't change the landscape. So at least in my case, the queens getting lost is really not an issue. I've never see a dragonfly attack a bee, but if the do, I have tons of them. I have seen bald faced wasps, Robber flies and various birds catch bees. I have found one thing that usually works, a mated queen in a cage. 😁 That's what I'm going to do this year...


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

I did note that Bob Binnie likes to place his mating nucs along tree lines vs. out in the middle of a field. Maybe there is something to that?


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

in my case, it doesn't help, my hives face south east across my main field, but are within 20 yards of the treeline on the north west side. I also have a single, fairly large ash tree that I planted to catch swarms on. Boy has it been worth it's weight in gold to have a single tree 20 yards in front of the hives for swarms to hang out on while they house hunt. Paid for itself in the first month when it was only 6 feet tall. No it's 20 feet, but a great landmark for bees to find coming from any direction. The whole family is trained to look at the ash tree when driving out of the farm and look for swarms.


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## madasafish (Aug 24, 2010)

Robbin said:


> in my case, it doesn't help, my hives face south east across my main field, but are within 20 yards of the treeline on the north west side. I also have a single, fairly large ash tree that I planted to catch swarms on. Boy has it been worth it's weight in gold to have a single tree 20 yards in front of the hives for swarms to hang out on while they house hunt. Paid for itself in the first month when it was only 6 feet tall. No it's 20 feet, but a great landmark for bees to find coming from any direction. The whole family is trained to look at the ash tree when driving out of the farm and look for swarms.



I am a hobby beekeeper in the UK. Been raising Qs for 5 years. I use mini mating nucs which take about 0.5 of a pint of bees to set them up.
Entrances coloured blue or yellow in various shapes.
Near 100% success in mating. Each about 3 feet above ground on an individual post sheltered from direct sunlight either by bushes, trees or a wooden cover.

Picture of an overwintered one (Kieler with cover)


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## mgolden (Oct 26, 2011)

Latest Bob Binnie with John Knox and mating nucs at 9:28


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## Thorting (Apr 18, 2020)

Adam, How was your year of queen mating? From other return rates that I have seen on another thread is they were very high. I caution your results because here in the central Pennsylvania we had 17 year locusts feeding the predators. If you had a decent supply of locust giving the birds slow tasty meals the fast small bees could have mated under their radar. Your results this year assuming low predator pressure will show the improvements that can be made where you might have control. hope you had a great season. Todd


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## Ryan Williamson (Feb 28, 2012)

Adam Foster Collins said:


> We just finished making 75 2-way mating nucs, which we have painted with patterns so that no two are exactly alike. We feel that the 4-ways are the most likely issue, along with a lack of larger landmarks in the wide open field. To aid with the second issue, we're planning to add some sort of tall markers in the yards as well and we'll compare.


Adam, as I'm working on nucs this winter I keep thinking about this thread so I thought I'd bring it back to life. I'm so curious how the two way mating nucs worked out compared to the four ways last season?
Thanks
Ryan


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Adam - I just had to wonder if MP's operation is too big and an 8-day-old queen returning to the correct address is a bigger issue for you all than most of us with smaller operations? Drift is my #1 suspicion.

I had the other-worldly experience of sitting in a DCA located in a gulch watching perhaps 2,000 drone comets for several hours one day a few years back. It was pretty intense.

I've been very fortunate about knowing where the DCA's are several years and this undoubtedly improved my success rate. I'm almost certain that MP's queen yard is packed with drones, but I have made every effort to ensure more than 50 drones per queen.

I used to run 2 queen cells per nuc', 10-frame boxes with 2 partitions (3 x 3-frame nuc's) early season, or 1 partition (2 x 5-frame) later in the season. The 2 x 5-frame arrangement usually was a little better than the 3 x 3-frame arrangement,

I think I also noticed an improvement when I switched to Mega-bee pollen sub' and hive-top liquid feeders which equated to more drones.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

I will occasionally install a second qc when I’m long on cells but I’ve never really noticed an increase in mating success. On checkbacks two to 3 weeks later you basically find one of 4 things 1. A newly mated queen with lots of open larva 2. A hopelessly queenless situation with the central brood nest area containing nectar or drone eggs, indicating a failure somewhere in the mating process. 3. A hive acting normally and keeping the brood nest clean, indicating the presence of a virgin soon to be laying (you’ll probably see a newly hatched cell as well). This generally indicates the initial cell was either defective or the hive wasn’t settled and in the “mood” to accept it. 4. And of course lastly, a hive full of sealed brood indicating an old queen. 
There is normally some attrition of your “good” initial matings in the coming months which I generally attribute to a poorly mated queen perhaps because of a lack of drones and we always find a few “lazy” ones that continue to lay but just never seem to build up much hive population through the summer. . Again, a poor mating perhaps?


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Oh, yes, I forgot to mention - I got better results leaving the drone colonies right in the DCA's and placing the mating nuc's (partitioned 10-framers, actually) about a quarter mile away, letting the queens fly to the DCA and giving the drones a nearby place to re-fuel for more flight time during prime hours. But then as I said before, I have been VERY lucky to know ahead of time exactly where the DCA's have been several years in a row.

The main trick to drone flooding has been feeding "too much" pollen sub with real pollen added in to the drone mother colonies, and these colonies had been given abnatural amounts of drone comb.


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## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

Hello Again,

Very rarely signing in to Beesource these days, as bees are taking all the time I have!

To update those interested, we generally run 4 groups of 128 mating nucs. We want queen numbers close to 100 per catch, but had been getting numbers way too low - even into the 70's at times. So we elected to try switching from 4-way boxes (a deep with for chambers and an entrance on each side), to 2-way boxes (a half-sized box with 2 chambers and an entrance on each end).

We built 64 of the 2-ways last winter to try them. I painted them all kinds of colors and patterns as well. Compared them in two locations and the results were clear. The 2-ways were way better. Right off the bat, our catches were around 110 and stayed that way all season.

Needless to say, we've built more this year.

Our believe is that with a 4-way, a returning queen fighting the wind can easily land on the wrong face of the box. If she does that, she has a good chance of running into bees from another colony in the box. That's all it would take to end her days. With a 2-way, the entrances are only on opposing sides, and the other two sides are clear of bees. 

These two ways are made with movable follower boards/dividers which allow us to combine four colonies with one queen and stack them for winter. 

It's a good solution for us.

Adam


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Adam Foster Collins said:


> Hello Again,
> 
> Very rarely signing in to Beesource these days, as bees are taking all the time I have!
> 
> ...


thanks for the feed back Adam

GG


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