# Marking Virgin Queens



## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Joseph, were the virgins that you marked mated and accepted by the colony?


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## Yuleluder (Mar 2, 2005)

Michael Palmer said:


> Joseph, were the virgins that you marked mated and accepted by the colony?


I'm with Mike's question. I thought about marking virgins also but wondered if it would hinder the mating process.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

At the UGA beelab they marked virigin queens for their queen breeding program. They needed to be sure that the virgin queens they started in each hive were actually the mated ones they were evaluating later.
They mated just fine after marking. They are much more difficult to mark than the mated queens.


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

we are raising virgin queens in an incubator. i imagine that newly emerged they are not likely to fly, and perhaps this is when they could be marked effectively? we don't mark our queens (virgin or mated), but if someone wants to try it, i'd be happy to supply a newly emerged virgin to someone local that wants to try (i'd be interested in how it works out).

deknow


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

deknow said:


> i imagine that newly emerged they are not likely to fly,
> deknow


Why not? Not yet dried out?

How are you keeping them seperated?


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

right...they look "dusty" and "wobbly" when they first emerge...not very coordinated. i don't know...perhaps the paint won't stick until they are hardened?

each cell is placed with the tip down in the mouth of a 3 dram glass vial...the queen cuts her way out and falls to the bottom of the vial. i then squish the cell shut (so she does not go back inside) and put a little honey on the outside of the cell...then lay the vial on it' side.

the glass should prevent the virgins from picking up any hive scent, plastic scent (from a cage), or scent from one another. so far they seem to march right into the colonies without being noticed (so far they are queenless nucs that are smoked heavily before introduction).

deknow


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Interesting. So, why aren't you just putting the cells in the nuc to begin w/?


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Michael Palmer,
This is my first time marking virgins, it's only been a few days since I did it. As soon as I see if any become nice mated/laying queens, I will let you know.


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

sqkcrk said:


> Interesting. So, why aren't you just putting the cells in the nuc to begin w/?


3 reasons:

1. we have a heavy market schedule this year (5 days a week), and the incubator allows a bit more flexibility (and you never use up a mating nuc with a cell that doesn't emerge).

2. there is a long history of requeening with young virgins (without first pinching the queen).

3. we wanted to make virgins available for requeening by others that want to build on the genetics in their apiaries/areas rather than replace them (with mated queens).

that said, i'll be placing some cells set to emerge tomorrow in some queenless nucs today, simply because of scheduling and the outyard is far to get to.

deknow

deknow


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

knew you had your reasons. thanx


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## Yuleluder (Mar 2, 2005)

deknow said:


> each cell is placed with the tip down in the mouth of a 3 dram glass vial...the queen cuts her way out and falls to the bottom of the vial. i then squish the cell shut (so she does not go back inside) and put a little honey on the outside of the cell...then lay the vial on it' side.


Is there any excess royal jelly in the cell when you squish it? I placed 16 cells into an incubator last weekend and when I returned on the day of emergence, I noticed the virgins feeding on the excess jelly in the cup. I thought it was an interesting observation. Although when I have seen virgins emerge in a colony they seem to jolt out of the cell, and I don't think they return to clean up the excess jelly, but I could be wrong.


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

one of the reasons for squishing the cell shut is that the queen can sometimes crawl back in to get some food, and get stuck.

deknow


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Update:

This morning I realized that in order to complete my "experiment", I needed to finish marking the last two or three virgin queens from that batch. So, I opened one nuc, where the queen cell should have finished emerging and discovered that the queen cell had been destroyed, and after further investigating found that the virgin queen from the next nuc over (who was marked the day before), had moved into that nuc and destroyed its queen cell - she was well accepted there, and after a thorough examination of her original nuc to confirm the diagnosis, I gave that nuc, which was now again queenless, a new ripe queen cell from my cell builder colony.

So, already I have learned things by my endeavors to mark my virgin queens. Things I had suspected, but now had visual confirmation.


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