# Quality Queen Cells with Small Nuc as Cell Starter?



## little_john (Aug 4, 2014)

That's a very good question ...

Those who support the '48hr' concept (that all the RJ the q/cell ever needs is deposited in the first 2 days) will presumably predict that they'll be inferior.

My own observations are that feeding appears to continue right up until the day the q/cell is capped (or at least that bees are in and out of the q/cell for some reason - presumably for feeding) and, as very little RJ is needed to initially maintain the growth of such a small larvae during the first 48 hrs or so - I'd say your queens will be ok.

I note you said "a few" emergency queen-cells - and therein perhaps lies the clue that all will be well, for bees will only start as many q/cells as they are capable of feeding.

It'll be interesting to see what results from this scenario ... so keep us posted.
LJ


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## JConnolly (Feb 21, 2015)

You did good, but I'd like to comment on this.



Boxelder said:


> I don't know how to graft


Again, you did good, so I'm speaking not about what you did, but to the future here. I suggest you consider learning to graft. You actually don't need much in the way of equipment so the entry cost is very low. Get some JZBZ cups, a JZBZ cup holding bar, and find Kaman Reynold's YouTube channel and get the Chinese grafting tools he linked from Amazon. That's it for the must haves. You can rubber band or use loose zip ties to secure the cup bar to a standard frame. If you want to make your own cups you can with a dowel and melted wax (Fat Bee Man shows how on YouTube). You could even make a crude grafting tool with a paper clip and a hammer, so you could even get started grafting at zero cost if you wanted. 

My first attempt was a disaster. I think I got maybe two accepted cells, and every cup I grafted took multiple tries, I probably killed a lot of larvae that day. The bees still share whispered rumors of a day of brutal mass baby carnage so many bee generations ago, the slaughter of the innocents. I'm entering my fifth summer grafting. Guess what? I still suck. My acceptance rate is <50%. But I've raised a bunch of great queens by just grafting double what I want. I finally got me a headband with a magnifier, maybe that will decrease the carnage.

So give it a try. :thumbsup:


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## Boxelder (Sep 16, 2017)

Thankyou all for the replies. I am sure this is one of those things that can vary quite a bit, depending on the proportion of nurse bees vs foragers in the nuc, how good a nectar flow they are on, etc. But I really like the idea that number of emergency queen cells started may be an indicator of the feeding capability of the nuc. In other words, if I see only two queen cells started, the nuc is probably not capable of feeding queen cells well. If, on the other hand, I see six or more queen cells started, wouldn't that be an indicator of a nuc that is capable of feeding the queen cells reasonably well?

Of course, I would still want to move the started cells over to a queenright finisher colony, to make sure that the cells get the full benefit of maximum days of feeding before sealing. 

RE grafting. I like the idea of knowing how to graft, and appreciate the encouragement to give it a try. I even have a couple chinese grafting tools in my kit! 

However, there is one reason why I like the concept of emergency cells better. According to some of the research I have been reading, when the bees are allowed to make their own emergency cells, they select from certain genetic lines (half sisters) within the colony. I think that is really cool, and suspect that may enable to bees to foster more rapid genetic adaption. So, I am trying to produce my queen cells without grafting


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## calkal (Feb 2, 2019)

I think you could have just left the started Queen cells in the 3 frame nuc and they would have raised their Queen with no further hassles for you. Last year I had 30 nucleus colonies, 3 frames each that I had started in anticipation to put in queens, that never happened and 95% of them raised very nice queens.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> However, there is one reason why I like the concept of emergency cells better. According to some of the research I have been reading, when the bees are allowed to make their own emergency cells, they select from certain genetic lines (half sisters) within the colony.


that sister thing didn't panout well 
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0199124


I see the royal subfamilys as parasitic.. for what ever reason the bees stop them from becoming part of the work force, suggesting that thier off spring mite be poor workers. Is short you not geting any of the drone lines that are shaping the traits of the workers. 
emergency cells are unnatural, a beekeeper induced condition that raily happens in wild/feral populations. Grafting(or human controal over the larva age) emulates swarm cells in
mode-young larva
action-random larva removes the "royal" efect to almost nill
quality-swarms cells are the best


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

Msl, as far as swarm cells go there are some keepers who claim that the using of swarm cells selects queens with a swarming tendency which also goes for keepers who collect swarms. Now if you wish to raise queens from grafts and you put those grafted cells in a busting hive that is showing signs of swarming by removing the queen you can get excellent queen cells drawn out and I will often get a 100% take. Swarming is a major issue and takes a lot of labor to prevent so I would like to find some of the genetics that will moderate that swarm impulse.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Johno I a believe you are miss interpreting my post, no were am I saying use swam cells
what was ment was 
swarm cells are of the highest quality, proper grafting/cell building emulates those conditions creating quality queens, emergency cells do not.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Johno, I question the entire swarmy genetics ideology. Has anyone proved this hypothesis, or is it one of those beekeeping myths that keep getting repeated until almost everyone believes it? I have seen a few papers that claim to provide proof, but nothing that satisfies my natural skepticism.

All my bees came from swarms as the only nuc I ever purchased died from varroa the first year. This year I only had three hives out of around 20 swarm. One was a swarm from last year that represented new material. On the other hand, a friend with over a dozen hives, all started from commercially produced queens, had all his hive swarm at least twice. My take is that a healthy hive is prone to swarm. A weak hive may or may not. Beekeeper intervention can prevent some swarming, but not all.

I just inspected three hives in Mechanicsville that were packages purchased in late March. One hive had already swarmed and had a newly mated queen in it. Another was in full blown swarm prep, the third, not a qc to be seen and the hive was overflowing with bees. All these were from presumably commercially grafted queens. I fail to see a benefit to them over any other.

What I can attest to from personal observation is that a swarm queen from a healthy hive is usually huge, having been well fed and cared for since day one. My E cell queens tend to run on the not so huge side.


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

JW, whether there is any truth to the swarm queen ideology or not I would certainly like some of those swarm free queens, there are some keepers who claim that they keep their brood boxes with deep frames and have no swarm problems and will not use queens from swarm cells or swarms. Now if I can be swarm free I would also like to have queens that will put their honey directly into the honey jars if I leave the case of jars next to the hive.


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## Absinthe (Feb 26, 2016)

I keep hearing about "The Chinese Grafting Tool" and the "German Grafting Tool" as well as fine paintbrushes and toothpicks and smashed paperclips. I assume it is all well and good, and anything will work once you have the skill for that particular implement of destruction. But the question that these things raise are 

"What is a 'Chinese' grafting tool?" . I have seen it and seen links for where to buy it. But is this a particular style of tool invented by the Chinese or some beekeeper of Chinese ethnicity? Or is it a tool invented by someone that just happens to be made cheaply in China? I guess the same question in parallel for the "German Grafting Tool" and I guess the "Italian Hive tool"... 

And to perhaps stay on topic, is it worth learning and setting up grafting if you only want to make < 10 queen cells? Where is the point of investment where setting up cups and special frames and such makes sense?


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> Johno, I question the entire swarmy genetics ideology. Has anyone proved this hypothesis, or is it one of those beekeeping myths that keep getting repeated until almost everyone believes it





> l, heritability estimates were 0.26 for honey yield, 0.36 for defensive behavior, and 0.34 for swarming behavior. Multi-trait estimation resulted in similar or higher heritability estimates for all traits. A low, positive genetic correlation (0.19) was found between honey yield and defensive behavior, whereas the genetic correlation between honey yield and swarming behavior was moderate (0.41). A strong, positive genetic correlation was found between defensive and swarming behaviors (0.62). Predictability for multi-trait evaluations was higher for honey yield (0.46) and defensive behavior (0.30) but almost identical for swarming behavior (0.45) compared to corresponding single-trait predictability.


Andonov etal 2019 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6805448/pdf/12863_2019_Article_776.pdf


swarming and defensiveness are some some of the easyist traits to slect for do to the strong heritability 
others arn't so easy such as VSH witch comes in at 0.18 

it IS worth noting that the study was on Italian honey bees and they may be more responsive to selection of these traits then other breeds, perhaps one of the reason they have become the domiant choice for beekeepers

My understanding is the The Chinese Grafting Tool was developed in china for royal jelly production were bekeepers are grafting hundreds if not thousands of cells a week

originally started as a hand made bamboo tool (that you can still find) and is now the injection molded verstion we are faimular with


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## Absinthe (Feb 26, 2016)

msl said:


> Andonov etal 2019 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6805448/pdf/12863_2019_Article_776.pdf
> 
> 
> swarming and defensiveness are some some of the easyist traits to slect for do to the strong heritability
> ...


Cool, it looks like a click-pen spring, a piece of a chopstick and couple pieces of hollow plastic tubing. Oh, yeah and that blade.. a very small piece of shim stock. I love it! It's elegant in its simplicity.

I saw how they were testing for the hygienic behavior with the tomato paste can and the liquid nitrogen. That was cool, but my local 7-11 is all out of liquid Nitrogen.  Someone must have been hoarding it during the pandemic. This was the Sustainable Honeybee Program. Of course other than Billy Davis' death, I have heard literally nothing about them as an organization lately. I think there was an alternative, more human intensive way than the liquid Nitrogen with a straight pin. Where you somehow marked some area of sealed brood then systematically pierced each one of them. I think it was limited in number to less than the liquid Nitrogen thing, but worked on the same principle. 

I assume you can measure defensiveness somehow, and swarming might certainly be determined by how much space constraint makes them start building swarm cells. I assume that winter frugality thus being alive and not needing additional resources come spring might well be survivor-ship proven. Certainly the ankle biting thing would have to be determined with microscopy or other means of observation. So much of this makes sense in a lab, with just a few things being easy enough to do for the general back yarder. 

I do imagine this as a huge undertaking with lots of colonies to compare. But, perhaps I am mistaken. Could it be done with say 5 or 10 small colonies at a time? As well you can choose the queens for their traits, but if they are open-mated you simply "hope" for good masculine genetic contributions? 

I guess survivor stock would certainly be the most reasonable starting point. Then one can certainly decide where to go from there as long as there is a good way to determine the metrics.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> Could it be done with say 5 or 10 small colonies at a time


yes.. but you realy need to be at a higher number or get lucky..
you may happen to find that golden goose, and knowing you have her is important 



> So much of this makes sense in a lab, with just a few things being easy enough to do for the general back yarder.


the liquid n2 is for hygienic behavior and is much more heritabil then VSH
over seas the pin kill assay is popular for VSH and easy for a back yard type, I just 3d printed a template to try for drone selection 
https://www.researchgate.net/public...earing_and_selection_of_Apis_mellifera_queens 
page 18 

The mite biting is easy, a $60 or so electric microscope has plenty of mag/res to do it, they also use them for "proper" (US) VSH where you open 100 cells and run the ratio of non reprodusting mites heres mine, its hooked up to a couputer but it has its own screen built in for feild work 








A quick look at NRH running theres 
https://www.facebook.com/NewRiverHoneyBees/videos/299841804356707/
all that said there is a lot of evidence that if you just select for low mite counts it works.. working for randy olver, worked for Keffuss, worked for the USDA 
VSH poline


> The selection we used (i.e.,
> finding colonies with low end-of-season mite
> infestations) proved to be useful in lieu of the
> technically difficult measurements (i.e., measuring rates of hygienic removal of mite-infested
> ...


DANKA Et Al 2015

what is true is you get what you select for
make a bunch of queens form a mean hive and you likly will have more mean hives in your yard 
make a bunch of spits from the 1st hive to swarm, you will have more hives that swarm early

as I said you want to check to make sure your not missing a "golden goose", but for the little guy its probably best to focus on making quality queens.
Queen quality matters more then genetics, and unlike genetics its 100% under your control !


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## John Davis (Apr 29, 2014)

One clarification to what msl said about selection for VSH in the pol-line bees.
They started by crossing the VSH bees (as measured by the percentage of reproducing varroa mother mites - the Harbo testing) into the commercial line.
Then they selected from those offspring using low mite counts as the easier to perform selection.
Their population was several thousand colonies.
Finding the golden goose in the "feral" swarm or your backyard is not likely.
Start with the best genetics you can for your situation and focus on making quality, well fed queens.


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## Absinthe (Feb 26, 2016)

msl said:


> yes.. but you realy need to be at a higher number or get lucky..
> you may happen to find that golden goose, and knowing you have her is important
> 
> 
> ...


I here Veruca Salt in the background ..I want a golden goose  So perhaps for the back yard guy, perhaps buying queens from known well bred stock and focusing on making more queens from them would be a more likely scenario than actually breeding anything into his own stock. Of course, I guess one could certainly, disqualify queens from the gene pool as they show a lack or desirable traits. 

But that brings it back to whether it is worth it or not for the backyard guy to graft. Or simply collect E-cell queen cells from splits?


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## Absinthe (Feb 26, 2016)

John Davis said:


> One clarification to what msl said about selection for VSH in the pol-line bees.
> They started by crossing the VSH bees (as measured by the percentage of reproducing varroa mother mites - the Harbo testing) into the commercial line.
> Then they selected from those offspring using low mite counts as the easier to perform selection.
> Their population was several thousand colonies.
> ...


Personally, I wouldn't expect to find much in a feral swarm here. I am of the opinion that the swarms around here are merely those leaving other keepers who didn't realize that spring starts in January  But if the idea is to start with some good stock somehow and continually split to maintain a backup nuc per colony or whatever formula, perhaps with some extra just in case in hopes that some might be sold off the next season, I guess at that point the idea would be more to maintain positive traits rather than breed for them.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Swarming is the process that honey bees have evolved on. Bees that swarm when conditions are ripe for it are true to type. Bees that swarm under bad conditions for success, like before drones are flying probably should not be chosen genetics. Timely swarming is a sign of vigor.


If you force an emergency reproduction it may limit the choices the workers have to cull out older larvae or ones who were underfed early on etc. They the have to work with what they have and the odds increase that some _could_ be not up to full potential. If you choose young larvae that are already well fed on their first day you will remove all most any reason the bees would have to want to cull any of them.

Grafting is not at all impossible to learn and as JConnolly says in his post above you can do it with zero budget. I shunned it for about 8 years and just got around to doing it for the first time a few days ago. 75% acceptance____ maybe beginners luck!


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## Absinthe (Feb 26, 2016)

Sounds encouraging. Do you think even for starting out? As in first split? So say you build up a strong hive, then instead of doing a walkaway split, just create a cell builder and graft? Would that produce better queens than a split would?


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> So perhaps for the back yard guy, perhaps buying queens from known well bred stock and focusing on making more queens from them would be a more likely scenario than actually breeding anything into his own stock


ding! 
its worth it to add that almost no one on this forum is doing any "breeding" most of what we do is matrilineal stock selection 



> But that brings it back to whether it is worth it or not for the backyard guy to graft. Or simply collect E-cell queen cells from splits?


Queen quality maters more then ANYTHING else you can control (except maby mites) 

FP quoting steve tabor's breeding super bees underlining is mine 


Fusion_power said:


> Quoting from the book:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


grafting lets you make more queens from your best and having a surplus on hand alows you to be picky, no "lets wait to see" if a poor performing queen will turn things around, or to see if a hot hive will mellow out with the flow...


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

For someone starting out and wanting only a few high quality queens, there is no need to make a separate cell builder. Simply remove the queen to a nuc and allow the bees in the parent colony to make E cells. Go back in on day four and remove any cell already capped. Allow the other cells to develop normally. On day 11 post split, carefully remove the cells and place in mating nucs, or make a few splits with the frames and all the remaining bees. When I care to do this, I often get 10-12 high quality queen cells.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

JWPalmer said:


> What I can attest to from personal observation is that a swarm queen from a healthy hive is usually huge, having been well fed and cared for since day one. My E cell queens tend to run on the not so huge side.


nuff said, not high quality

if it was so easy to make good queens they wouldn't cost $40


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Different process. E cells in walk away splits vs E cells in a large hive. The walk away splits tend to vary more, and often the queen is simply normal sized, the large hive produces more uniformly large cells and a few turn into monster queens. Could be a matter of perspective. Producing decent queens is not as hard as getting them well mated. Something that seems to be a problem with some commercial queen producers. I am quite happy with queens I produce and so are my nuc customers whose hives are all booming. In the end, that is all that matters.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> Producing decent queens is not as hard as getting them well mated. Something that seems to be a problem with some commercial queen producers


Tarpys work suggests the opposite



> Recent surveys of beekeepers have suggested that 'poor queens' are a top management concern, thus investigating the reproductive quality and mating success of commercially produced honey bee queens is warranted. We purchased 80 commercially produced queens from large queen breeders in California and measured them for their physical size (fresh weigh and thorax width), insemination success (stored sperm counts and sperm viability), and mating number (determined by patriline genotyping of worker offspring). We found that queens had an average of 4.37 +/- 1.446 million stored sperm in their spermathecae with an average viability of 83.7 +/- 13.33%. We also found that the tested queens had mated with a high number of drones (average effective paternity frequency: 17.0 +/- 8.98). Queen "quality" significantly varied among commercial sources for physical characters but not for mating characters. These findings suggest that it may be more effective to improve overall queen reproductive potential by culling lower-quality queens rather than systematically altering current queen production practices.


https://www.researchgate.net/public...ating_'Health'_of_Commercial_Honey_Bee_Queens


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

So it would seem. But the selection crirteria was "large queen breeders in California". Was sample size of queens 80 total or 80 from each of how many different breeders?
I may need to read the actual paper and not just an abstract. Who knows, maybe I am believing some of the myths myself. But are we not changing the subject?



> Queen "quality" significantly varied among commercial sources for physical characters


Mating issues aside, it seems that your $40 queen from a commercial breeder is still a crapshoot for quality.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> I may need to read the actual paper and not just an abstract.


as usual (with a few exeptions) the link I posted takes you to the full paper

If you prefer his talk on the subject covers most of it as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yxrawVF0Oc



> it seems that your $40 queen from a commercial breeder is still a crapshoot for quality.


nope.... but thats were the room for improvement is 


> The intent of this study was to determine if commercially produced honey bee queens are of low reproductive potential and may therefore explain their diminished quality perceived by the industry. However, our data shows very little, if any, evidence that this is the case for newly mated queens.These findings corroborate Delaney et al. (2011), who also suggest that commercially produced queens are generally high in their reproductive potential


paraphrasing one of his lectures... todays queens are just as good as the queens of old in every way we can measure

people love to take shots at commercial beekeeping... it sells 
the TF guru's sell the snot out of it...
the alt hive types sell the snot out of it 
but who is buying the $$$ (300-600) II breeder queens form the TF operations like latshaw and VP queens?? or the cells off those breeders from the likes of David Mikisa and others ?


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

I did download the paper from the link you provided and will read it this evening. I am not taking shots at the commercial breeders, I hope no-one sees it that way. What I am suggesting is that the average Joe Beekeeper can produce his or her own queens of good quality without a lot of monkey motions. A good cell builder is easy to make, if you have a boat load of bees. A booming hive made queenless can act as a starter finisher too, and that was what I was getting at. Whether one allows the bees to make E cells or places grafts in it, it works the same and is probably a better choice for someone with only a few hives.

One of these days I hope to be buying an II breeder queen myself. Just not quite there yet.


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## Absinthe (Feb 26, 2016)

JWPalmer said:


> For someone starting out and wanting only a few high quality queens, there is no need to make a separate cell builder. Simply remove the queen to a nuc and allow the bees in the parent colony to make E cells. Go back in on day four and remove any cell already capped. Allow the other cells to develop normally. On day 11 post split, carefully remove the cells and place in mating nucs, or make a few splits with the frames and all the remaining bees. When I care to do this, I often get 10-12 high quality queen cells.


Okay, so if any queen cells were started with larva > 2 days then they would be capped by the 4th day after queenlessness. I guess this also implies that I tear down anything I find that I see on the day of the split?


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

JWPalmer said:


> ...I am suggesting is that the average Joe Beekeeper can produce his or her own queens of good quality without a lot of monkey motions. A good cell builder is easy to make, if you have a boat load of bees. A booming hive made queenless can act as a starter finisher too, and that was what I was getting at....


This has always been my approach too and I am not changing.

What I will change is this - I will want to mate as many the resulting queens as possible, as cheaply as possible and test them too using the small nucs (vs. the large nucs). And so if mating/testing such queens is cheap, it is not a big problem to throw away 50% of the worse queens and keep the others.

Rigged up 8 mini-nucs based on 3 mini-frames each.
Standing by in the garage.
Waiting for my large backyard resource hive to hopefully enter the swarming mood (they are getting pretty tight).
If they don't, in 1-2 weeks I will force the E cells.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Absinthe said:


> Okay, so if any queen cells were started with larva > 2 days then they would be capped by the 4th day after queenlessness. I guess this also implies that I tear down anything I find that I see on the day of the split?


If, on the day of the split, you find queen cells in a queenright hive, do not destroy them. They are either swarm cells or supercedure cells and are the best you can get.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

JWPalmer said:


> If, on the day of the split, you find queen cells in a queenright hive, do not destroy them. They are either swarm cells or supercedure cells and are the best you can get.


+1
Natural swarm/supercedure cells are superior to all other cells (including the grafted cells).
The only downside of these - low human control.
But every time these cells are found in a desired hive, one should take advantage of these cells, NOT be destroying them.


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## Absinthe (Feb 26, 2016)

JWPalmer said:


> If, on the day of the split, you find queen cells in a queenright hive, do not destroy them. They are either swarm cells or supercedure cells and are the best you can get.


 So if I see swarm or supercedure on the day of the split, then I am just finished. Move the queen and not a frame with those cells on it to a small nuc, and close this one up and just do the split as is. OR try to make a split per frame with one of these cells on it..


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Absinthe said:


> So if I see swarm or supercedure on the day of the split, then I am just finished. Move the queen and not a frame with those cells on it to a small nuc, and close this one up and just do the split as is. OR try to make a split per frame with one of these cells on it..


Make a mating split per a cell if possible.
This should account for possible mating failures.
Then regroup around the successfully mated queens.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

msl said:


> what is true is you get what you select for


For a number of years I felt we were selecting for 'reduced swarming'. Any colony where we found cells would be re-queened from the stock that was not producing swarm cells. If it was to early for us to have queens ready, I'd do a cut down split, then both halves of the split would be re-queened later in the season. We reached the point such that two years ago we had no colonies where we found swarm preps before the May long weekend. That date is significant for us, it's middle of the spring flow, and it's the time we do our splitting. At that point I can have ripe cells for the mating nucs, so we do the splits using queens that wintered in the mating nucs.

Last year I ended up in the hospital the day before May long weekend, so we didn't get the splits done on schedule. 4 days after I got into the hospital I sent wife home, we were in the big city 4 hours drive up the road, me in the hospital and she in the hotel. A day after she got home, she was texting me photos of swarms coming out of our hives. Turns out what we were selecting for was 'dont swarm with our management', which is fine, it met our goals, but left alone they did eventually swarm, just much later and from much larger colonies than the ones we had been culling over the years.



JWPalmer said:


> What I am suggesting is that the average Joe Beekeeper can produce his or her own queens of good quality without a lot of monkey motions.


The 'monkey motions' as you call them are what allows the larger scale producer to make more quality queens efficiently with fewer resources. I've got two colonies housing my graft sources, a third with cloak board as my cell starter / finisher, then a herd of mini nucs for mating queens. I've been able to raise and mate 40 queens with 20 more in mating nucs so far this season, numbers going up by 10 a week limited only by the number of mating nucs I have operational right now.

So one thing that has come out this year, and it's got me scratching my head a bit. My schedule has always been 'weekly', ie I graft on Wednesday and harvest queens on Saturday. So the question has always been for me, do I leave queens in the mating nucs for 2 weeks, or 3 weeks ? The answer to that question drives the need for a lot more equipment if I choose 3 weeks. I had settled on 3 weeks a couple years ago because I had one round where weather was not so great and not a single queen was mated after two weeks. This year I was in a hurry for queens, so I started checking them at two weeks after placing cells. So far there has only been one queen not laying after two weeks in the mating nuc. If I can run on mostly 2 week schedule then it makes a huge difference in how much equipment I need, to produce 20 queens a week next summer that's the difference between 40 and 60 mating nucs.



GregV said:


> What I will change is this - I will want to mate as many the resulting queens as possible, as cheaply as possible and test them too using the small nucs (vs. the large nucs). And so if mating/testing such queens is cheap, it is not a big problem to throw away 50% of the worse queens and keep the others.
> 
> Rigged up 8 mini-nucs based on 3 mini-frames each.


Minis are great for mating with minimal resources, but they provide no value for testing, there isn't enough comb space for a queen to stretch out and show her laying potential. I had one I took from a mating nuc a couple weeks ago, comment on the sheet says 'tiny like a virgin, but she is laying', this was the one that took an extra week to start laying. I put her into a fresh split that had some empty drawn comb. Two weeks later the inspection sheet says 'full sheet of open brood, queen is a nice large fat queen'. I know it is the same queen, still had the mark on her. My minis are 5 half size frames in a quadrant, so if using the real small mini frames typically associated with the styro mini nucs, honestly all they can tell you about a queen is 'laying or not laying'. Not enough space to judge a pattern or stamina, ie, how much of a sheet she can lay up in a day. They say a really good queen can lay 2000 eggs in a day, 3 of the mini frames probably dont add up to 2000 cells total.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

grozzie2 said:


> .....
> 
> 
> Minis are great for mating with minimal resources, but they provide no value for testing, there isn't enough comb space for a queen to stretch out and show her laying potential. I had one I took from a mating nuc a couple weeks ago, comment on the sheet says 'tiny like a virgin, but she is laying', this was the one that took an extra week to start laying. I put her into a fresh split that had some empty drawn comb. Two weeks later the inspection sheet says 'full sheet of open brood, queen is a nice large fat queen'. I know it is the same queen, still had the mark on her. My minis are 5 half size frames in a quadrant, so if using the real small mini frames typically associated with the styro mini nucs, honestly all they can tell you about a queen is 'laying or not laying'. Not enough space to judge a pattern or stamina, ie, how much of a sheet she can lay up in a day. They say a really good queen can lay 2000 eggs in a day, 3 of the mini frames probably dont add up to 2000 cells total.


The testing in this context is pretty much simple - did she mate well enough OR didn't she mate well enough (or even at all).
If she looks like she laying OK, an upgrade is then in order.
Of course, 3-4 mini-frames is not a full-blown test (though, the queen breeders (large and small) sell such queens too as "mated and laying" as if they have been tested).

Heck, Sam Comfort on the video fetches queens from his tiny 4-comb "comfort hives" and packages them for sales
Like in here (starting 50:00 or so) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umImMqE5IA8

If anyone cares to test in more advanced fashion, they can.
If you sell queens - you probably should.

For backyard project with 3-4-5 new queens no need to be too advanced and loose sleep over it.
Laying OK/not laying OK - pretty simple and basic test that should not require much resources.
Still, this is a good enough test for self-consumption.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> Heck, Sam Comfort on the video fetches queens from his tiny 4-comb "comfort hives"


sam's hives are a 2 deep equivalent, the little 3 comb MIC foam minis are 35% of a deep 



> Turns out what we were selecting for was 'dont swarm with our management'


yep, for the most part we are slecting for hives that respond to swarm management.. its the ones that swarm with plenty of space that are the problem, we call them "swarmy" but what we realy are taking about is they are responding to a different set of triggers and they respond to available space differently


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

msl said:


> sam's hives are a 2 deep equivalent, the little 3 comb MIC foam minis are 35% of a deep


But he runs them 50/50 per a queen - 4 little combs (as far as I can see on the video).
So that is one deep frame equivalent per a queen.

At that rate, what kind of testing is there to speak of?

I made my mini-frames ~7x7 (to fit the foam boxes I got).
About a medium frame equivalent for the 3 combs.
Should work.


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## Absinthe (Feb 26, 2016)

GregV said:


> Make a mating split per a cell if possible.
> This should account for possible mating failures.
> Then regroup around the successfully mated queens.


So, if I do that, then I should now have a queenless hive still, because the queen was removed to a nuc in the first place. Now, I have removed their supercedure and swarm cells if they had made them, creating a split from each one. Depending if I cut the cells or pulled the frames I would still have eggs and larva that could be made into cells, checking at 4 days would still remove any capped, and then harvest one week following that check. 

I think I understand the process, just guessing that unless I make those cute little foam mating nucs with the skewers, I will not have enough support bees to get them all mated  

This is probably more appropriate for year 2 than year 1. But I do like the cute little foam thingies.. Do you have a name for them @msl ... I was looking into the foams available, and the extruded poly whatever... the blue and pink, and maybe the green actually glue together with "gliden gripper". There a bunch of makers that use that stuff for all sorts of fun and games. And model makers as well. There is an airplane guy that actually laminates wings he cuts out with craft paper. Seems like an interesting medium in which to play.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> But he runs them 50/50 per a queen - 4 little combs (as far as I can see on the video).
> So that is one deep frame equivalent per a queen.
> 
> At that rate, what kind of testing is there to speak of?


each comb is around 1/2 deep equivalent 
the size alows for a 3 week catch cycle (most mass prodused ones are closer to 2 weeks) this alows for the brood to be capped so you can see the pattern and if she is a drone layer 



> Do you have a name for them @msl ... I was looking into the foams available, and the extruded poly whatever... the blue and pink, and maybe the green actually glue together with "gliden gripper"


 I had just been calling them a "front range mini" or a "outreach nuc" 
the screws hold supersizing well 

Swinging back to the OPs question
yes, yes you can







75% take at 17 hours form graft, a woping 3 out of 4 cells


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Grozzie, monkey motions is a phrase I borrowed from Harry Vanderpool, one of the moderators here on Beesource. It references doing a bunch of unnecessary things that ultimately have no impact on the final outcome. The context here is that Joe Beekeeper who is looking to raise a few queens does not need to go the cell builder route. Obviously if one were attempting to graft 40 cells a week for two or three weeks, a cell builder is required, as well as some strong hives to use as finishers.


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## Absinthe (Feb 26, 2016)

I get the screw thing, seems to work great from what I could see. I was thinking more of the material as a medium in general. Maybe to even make full size equipment. The idea that it could be somewhat close to solvent bonded is attractive. One could do something not unlike the beer cooler without expansion forming or whatever technique is required to make them. And the idea of laminating them with craft paper would make the base interior surface more like wood. 

But I digress. I liked that you were able to mate with just the cup of bees. And, showing the Comfort video of his box hives in use sent me down quite the interesting rabbit hole to boot!


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

msl said:


> each comb is around 1/2 deep equivalent
> the size alows for a 3 week catch cycle (most mass prodused ones are closer to 2 weeks) this alows for the brood to be capped so you can see the pattern and if she is a drone layer


OK.
So close to a single deep frame space should be OK.
I got 3-frame mini-nucs and 6-frame mini-nucs - got options.


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## Boxelder (Sep 16, 2017)

msl said:


> that sister thing didn't panout well
> https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0199124
> 
> 
> ...


Thankyou all for the interesting replies. I enjoyed the Sam Comfort video as well.

I am going to argue the above statement a little, for the sake of a good discussion.

IF we accept the idea that emergency cells are an unnatural event that rarely happens in nature, then we would NOT expect this highly sophisticated behavior of selecting emergency queens based on royal subfamily. Evolution just doesn't work that way - their is no reason for this sophisticated behavior to be conserved UNLESS the same kind of royal selection also occurs when a hive makes supercedure cells...

Any thoughts? Do we know if any genetic selection is done by the bees when supercedure cells are made?


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

I don't see any sophisticated behavior, just a set of genetics with different pheromone cues triggering the bees to pick "that" one... just as they pick better fed larva do a pheromone trigger

as to supercedure, form the paper



> While this “royal” patriline effect plays a major role in emergency queen rearing, this is only one of three conditions under which honey bees rear new queens. The primary condition under which new queens are reared is when the colony reproduces through swarming [50]. During these events, the mother queen lays eggs in special “queen cup” cells and the resulting larvae are invariably raised as queens. Shortly before the virgin queens emerge, the mother queen and approximately three-quarters of the workers leave the hive and establish a new home elsewhere [51]. Because swarm queens are raised directly from queen-laid eggs, there is little opportunity for workers to bias the outcome. Such activities would be limited to preferentially transferring eggs/larvae from worker cells into queen cups [52], or selectively rejecting certain queen-deposited eggs/larvae cannibalism or destruction of completed swarm cells prior to queen emergence [21]. Lattorff and Moritz [22] found that swarm queens do not significantly differ from worker patriline distributions, though their data suggest that further analysis may be necessary to rule this out entirely. Similarly, supersedure queens (produced when a queen is failing but still present and laying) are presumably also laid by queens in queen cups [53] and so should not undergo significant selection by workers. Because of this, the “royal” patriline bias is a primary factor in only a minority of requeening events


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## Boxelder (Sep 16, 2017)

I may be learning something here...RE the quote

"Similarly, supersedure queens (produced when a queen is failing but still present and laying) are presumably also laid by queens in queen cups [53] and so should not undergo significant selection by workers."


I had always had the impression that supercedure cells were remodeled worker cells, just like an emergency cell. Is that not the case?


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Boxelder said:


> I may be learning something here...RE the quote
> 
> "Similarly, supersedure queens (produced when a queen is failing but still present and laying) are presumably also laid by queens in queen cups [53] and so should not undergo significant selection by workers."
> 
> ...


No.
At least this is what being taught - no.
Supercedure cells are by design and planned for project.
Emergency cells are a catch up and a reaction after the fact.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

dup


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

But anyway, why not just watch Sam Comfort.
He does simple EC's and is doing well for himself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfZpLUNEEZ8


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

ahhhhh
kinda? 
He has been working with the micro splits and they have been a little hit or miss. 
The concept is you don't split up the hive so the bees can chose the better queen cells.. In one of the videos he talks about the pull the queen, let them draw cells, break in to nucs method and felt 80% of what he got that way were poor queens, some to the point of intercast 

He is not selling E queens, he grafts and cell builds traditionally 

Full scale trial is running right now 100 E queens made by small splits (3f nuc a bit bigged then what he was doing before) vs 100 48 hour cells vs 100 10 day (normal) cells 

Sounds like the 1st round of data is in, the out come should be interesting https://projects.sare.org/project-reports/one19-326/


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

msl said:


> ahhhhh
> kinda? .......


Well, but for now we get to watch whatever they posted on the youtube and labeled as - "....a simple method by which a beekeeper can raise new *top quality queens *with a minimum cash outlay and minimum work."

Listen what Sam is saying at 5:00 and on... in regards to EC queens.

Should they (the Treatment-Free Beekeeping channel owner) remove the video (posted less than a year ago)?
Or Sam Comfort could, for that matter.

A lot of people have been watching this and getting the ideas.
The people will be disappointed (again).


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

well, that's Solomon Parker for you, I would take what he writes with a grain of salt. 

Sam HAS raized some good queens with this method
Here is a score card from the Tarpy lab at NC state on one batch of them








other times he has said "The results were all over the map"
there has been a bunch of work to try to get the recipe right, and thats whats being tested now.


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

Interesting comment above.
I can't think of a superseder cell from a cup that I've seen. Few cups that get started get torn down.

It is possible to raise a poor queen from any method used, that I will swear to.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> It is possible to raise a poor queen from any method used, that I will swear to.


yes
that's why I feel its important to see a mating nuc as a mating nuc, not a split.
If you see it as a split you see it as a colony and are more hesitant to pinch a poor queen, or grab her and put her in another hive to replace a poor queen elce ware in a production hive, costing you. People get stuck "waiting to see if she will turn it around". 

Thats one reason I have been localy pushing minis and push in cageing cells lately.. the nuc size makes it easy to see her as just a queen, and if she sucks you not going to put her in a split, just pinch and recell/virgin or just shake out that cup of bees. The caging aloes you to get many more queens out of the deal, once you have more then you need being selective becomes much more easy..


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

msl said:


> yes
> that's why I feel its important to see a mating nuc as a mating nuc, not a split.
> .


Agreed.

The whole point of a small mating nuc - it is a low resource investment --> minimized loss in case of failure --> high tolerance to the nuc failure.
If one to make 10 mating nucs and the success rate is 50% - you have made 5 mated queens at the cost of 10 cups of bees and some syrup.
All the while the workforce in the source hive(s) was not fragmented by a lot causing general productivity loss.
Once you have 5 good-enough mated queens - targeted splits around the ready-to-go queens is a much better project.

To compare, a true split is a high resource investment --> the potential loss cost is higher --> lower tolerance to the split mating failure --> this causes too much futzing/time spent to keep propping the failing splits (which I have done in the past).

The worst possible split is, of course, 50/50 walk away - the entire bet is on a single random EC which will hopefully turn into a magic, great queen.
All the while the workforce is fragmented 50/50 with significant productivity loss.


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## JConnolly (Feb 21, 2015)

Monkey motions is exactly why I started questioning why I was setting up a cell starter nuc with a ventilation box that had to be screwed to my nuc and then stuffed with bees and watered and fed, only to move the frame a day later to a finisher hive that I also had to set up, and breaking down the starter because I wasn't going to need it again for several weeks. I was doing all of that for grafting only two times per year for only a few queens. After using a Cloake board for the first time now, monkey motions indeed seems like a good description when setting up a Cloake board was no more work at all than setting up just the cell builder would have been. I was using the starter because that was what the large scale producers were doing. Monkey see, monkey do. Even the Cloake board method has potential so far beyond what I need but it still affords me the timing control that I wanted, so I think it's a good move so far.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> I was using the starter because that was what the large scale producers were doing. Monkey see, monkey do. Even the Cloake board method has potential so far beyond what I need but it still affords me the timing control that I wanted, so I think it's a good move so far.


yep
the swarm box starter is very robust and hard to mess up, and does a lot of cells.... So you see it used in a teaching environment... great for pumping out 48 hour cells for people to take home from a weekend queen rearing class, not so much scaled to hobiest level production. witch is while I develed in to the single box do all.


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## Clh (May 27, 2021)

JConnolly said:


> You did good, but I'd like to comment on this.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Clh (May 27, 2021)

Grafting, even on a small scale brings freedom to the little Beekeeper. I am not very good, but I do have a surplus of mated queens. Think I am going to grow a little.


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## OLD KENTUCKY (Feb 18, 2021)

calkal said:


> I think you could have just left the started Queen cells in the 3 frame nuc and they would have raised their Queen with no further hassles for you. Last year I had 30 nucleus colonies, 3 frames each that I had started in anticipation to put in queens, that never happened and 95% of them raised very nice queens.


I put a frame of capped brood with nurse bees, frame of honey and empty frame in a nuke with a queen I bought. I am having trouble with robbers, and I have no foragers going out at the present. I'm feeding sugar syrup. Will some of the nurse bees start foraging as the bees are born from the capped brood? OLD KENTUCKY


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Boxelder said:


> Thankyou all for the replies. I am sure this is one of those things that can vary quite a bit, depending on the proportion of nurse bees vs foragers in the nuc, how good a nectar flow they are on, etc. But I really like the idea that number of emergency queen cells started may be an indicator of the feeding capability of the nuc. In other words, if I see only two queen cells started, the nuc is probably not capable of feeding queen cells well. If, on the other hand, I see six or more queen cells started, wouldn't that be an indicator of a nuc that is capable of feeding the queen cells reasonably well?
> 
> Of course, I would still want to move the started cells over to a queenright finisher colony, to make sure that the cells get the full benefit of maximum days of feeding before sealing.
> 
> ...


Boxelder,

you should look at the Miller and Alley methods, for a few queens, it may be a nice alternative.


Miller Method


miller basically cuts thru a comb with eggs/young larvae and places in a Queen less hive. they like to use the edge.
for both "thin surplus" foundation works fine.








Henry Alley, a Pioneer Queen Producer - American Bee Journal


In 1889, a seismic shift occurred in queen-rearing technology leading to the rise in fame of one beekeeper and the fading of another. First though, appreciate how different beekeeping was back then. In the United States, seven bee journals were devoted to apiculture, either wholly or partly. Two...




americanbeejournal.com




Alley basically cuts a strip of comb with eggs/larvae and rotates it cell orientation down and places in a queenless hive both IMO can be done from the same comb, cut to the eggs, one slice on a different frame the cut frame also insterted.
Also allows the bees to choose. BTW I am also in the camp of Queen rearing is way to important for the event to be "totally" random, so My best queens have been "bee chosen" eggs 

I personally feel the biggest hives produce the best queens, number of nurse bee visits, over all ability to make RJ and the temp control, somewhat all of it. I like 20 to 30 frames of bees making queens. results can vary and a "queen" can be done in a NUC. but if you go thru the time and motions why not upsize the builder a bit. M Palmer has a couple UTubes on how he preps his cell builders. also worth watching

If you can find the queen , I would do one of the above or both into a large Queen less hive, IMO better results would happen.

once you start down the trail of making your own queens it is really rewarding IMO.

good luck
GG


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## Deens Bees (Feb 11, 2021)

JWPalmer said:


> Johno, I question the entire swarmy genetics ideology. Has anyone proved this hypothesis, or is it one of those beekeeping myths that keep getting repeated until almost everyone believes it? I have seen a few papers that claim to provide proof, but nothing that satisfies my natural skepticism.
> 
> All my bees came from swarms as the only nuc I ever purchased died from varroa the first year. This year I only had three hives out of around 20 swarm. One was a swarm from last year that represented new material. On the other hand, a friend with over a dozen hives, all started from commercially produced queens, had all his hive swarm at least twice. My take is that a healthy hive is prone to swarm. A weak hive may or may not. Beekeeper intervention can prevent some swarming, but not all.
> 
> ...


I guess I'm different in the swarm prevention idea. When my hives show signs of swarming in the spring, I pat myself on the back for getting "Healthy" bees through the winter. I make nucs with the swarm cells and split the hive or, if loses are low, just wave goodbye as they leave the apiary. I don't think weak or sick bees will swarm (abscond maybe). If you "select" for bees that don't tend to swarm. Aren't you selecting for bees that assure the decline of the species? I only run 20 or so colonies and I'm not interested in more than a 100lbs of honey per year so maybe my goals are different.


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

I personally do not want any swarms but unfortunately my carni type of bee thinks otherwise. As a greedy capatilist pig I do not want to save the bees I want to enslave the bees and I have about 6 to 8 weeks in the year to maximise my honey yield and swarming does not help in any way. So from early spring to beginning of my flow in mid April I am pushing my bees to build up numbers to make use of the nectar when it starts. But with high numbers in the colonies the only way I can prevent swarming is to remove queens make nucs and queen cells then provide each colony with a queen cell. Maybe next year I should just split each hive and just have twice as many small hives and still get a reasonable harvest.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Deens Bees said:


> I guess I'm different in the swarm prevention idea. When my hives show signs of swarming in the spring, I pat myself on the back for getting "Healthy" bees through the winter. I make nucs with the swarm cells and split the hive or, if loses are low, just wave goodbye as they leave the apiary. I don't think weak or sick bees will swarm (abscond maybe). If you "select" for bees that don't tend to swarm. Aren't you selecting for bees that assure the decline of the species? I only run 20 or so colonies and I'm not interested in more than a 100lbs of honey per year so maybe my goals are different.


Deens Bees,

I do a similar approach, try to do swarm prevention splits just before the prime swarm leaves.
the timing can be a bit of a challenge. so I think you are on the right track.
in the process I am trying to use overwintered hives that build fast in the spring and are healthy.

if it works for you then it must be right

GG


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## Deens Bees (Feb 11, 2021)

It’s about your goals in the end. I’ve never bought bees but last year I bought 3lbs of pure Russians. The package was DOA but the queen was alive. I put her in a nuc and picked up a replacement package (shout out Kelly bee). It’s a small sample but I’ve never seen colonies build so fast and try to swarm. My favorites this season. Wish I could find more pure Russian queens to mix in my genetics.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

some more work on the subject https://projects.sare.org/project-reports/fne20-964/



> split into 48 nucleus hives of various volumes: two comb "box hive" (3 liters), four comb "box hive" (6 liters), two frame Langstroth (8.4 liters), four frame Langstroth (16.8 liters).


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