# queens



## Focus on Bees (Mar 6, 2006)

I guess I would. Just keep an eye on the new one to see what traits you get. Ya never know what you could get until you try. Good Luck !!


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## TXBEE (Feb 23, 2006)

For a breeder queen, you want a queen that had a large amount of brood, along with a very good brood pattern. You also want to make sure they made lots of honey last year. Those are just a few things to look for. I would just make sure they are not to mean. You don't want african bees!







I used a swarm queen last year as a breeder. A lot of my swarm queens were better than the queens I orderd!


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## Finman (Nov 5, 2004)

If you take queens from swarmed hives you surely will get more swarms. 

Non swarming stock is "unnatural mode" and result of human selection. When stock gets the feature back it will not promise good.


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## Idahobeeguy (Feb 14, 2006)

There are few definites in the world of bees and biology in general. There are a number of factors that play a role in the decision of a colony to swarm. The congestion of the brood nest is likely a factor. The genetics of the queen may play a role as well. 
To say that queens raised from swarm queen stock is going to cause more swarming is a bit of a leap. Remember, the drones (up to 17 in some studies) will also contribute to the genetic factor of swarming. 
I believe that it is safe to say that most colonies, no matter their genetics, will swarm if the conditions for swarming are met. 
Given the choice between 2 queens that were identical in all other things, I would select the one that did NOT come from a swarm. This helps to reduce the chance that this tendency will show up again.
If however, the queen from the swarm rules a hive of superior honey gathering, mite resistance, etc, I might me swayed to take a chance and see what happens.
Let me know what you decide to do, as I am always interested in new experiments.


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## Finman (Nov 5, 2004)

"To say that queens raised from swarm queen stock is going to cause more swarming is a bit of a leap."

I have 40 years experience know I know what I am talking. There are great differencies with swarming habit between stocks. If your bee yard tend to swarm best choice is to change your stock. I have made it some times. I had Carniolan 10 years and they were awfull. 

I raise my queens from commercial queens. If I take queens from hybrids, results are not good at all. If the goodness of hive is result of hybrid force hive is not proper for breeding.

http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/PDFs/Swarm_Prev_Control_PM.pdf
.


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## Finman (Nov 5, 2004)

>"If however, the queen from the swarm rules a hive of superior honey gathering, mite resistance, etc, I might me swayed to take a chance and see what happens.
Let me know what you decide to do, as I am always interested in new experiments.<"

I have 20 hives. When you have small yard you have no possibilyty to keep your own strain. They mate freely and fetures mix with surrounding.

When professional beekeeper select best hive from 800 hives it is something else when I select from 20.

I changed my carniolans to Italians and my average yields jumped 80%. During 3 years my average yield has been 160 lbs per hive. Our yield season in Finland is one month or less.

Big hives and big yields demands that no swarming. Then you need good pastures. No matter how good are your bees if thera are not enough nectar nerbye. 

During my beekeeping time yileds per hive have raised 4-fold. Biggest reason of this is 4-fold hives which do not swarm.

But same hive may gather easily 3-fold yield from another pastures and even 5-fold. I am accustomed to this just in these years.

The balance with foraging bees and nurser bees is important when you judge if hive is ready to catch big yields. Canola is a good test place.

Last summer I put 3 good hives on 15 hectare fireweed pasture. In three weeks they each foraged enormous yield. I took from each about 300 lbs honey. They foraging distance was something under half mile. 

4 miles from this point hives got only 20% yield because canola suffered from hot weathers.


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## Idahobeeguy (Feb 14, 2006)

Ken, I stand by my first post. There are pros and cons to using swarm stock. Finman points out a very good article that suggests using queens without a tendency to swarm. 
I suggest that the fact that the parent hive of the queen swarmed indicates that it was productive. 

Finman suggests that "Non swarming stock is "unnatural mode" and result of human selection. When stock gets the feature back it will not promise good." 
It seems to me that any queens I've had over the years, whether swarm stock or commercial queens, will swarm when conditions are met. 

I believe that selecting to eliminate this "feature" of nature would be a bad long term goal. Perhaps in the short term, there are profits to be turned. In the long term, such an inability for bees to reproduce could be dangerous. I don't believe that this tendency will ever be eliminated, and would suggest that the other factors such as brood congestion play a large role in the swarming process.

"I have 20 hives. When you have small yard you have no possibilyty to keep your own strain. They mate freely and fetures mix with surrounding.

When professional beekeeper select best hive from 800 hives it is something else when I select from 20."
Finman, I completely agree with your statements on the statistics involved with a breeding operation. 
I used the word experiment rather loosely, I wasn't anticipating a full scale research project based upon the results of a single hive. To base conclusions of quality of queen manipulations would be on par with some of the sweeping claims you make as to the success of your colonies.

"I changed my carniolans to Italians and my average yields jumped 80%. During 3 years my average yield has been 160 lbs per hive. Our yield season in Finland is one month or less."

There seems to be an implication of cause and effect here between the switch from Carniolans to Italians and an increase in yields. If you really wanted to get technical, as you are in your questioniong of my proposed "expermiment" for Ken, then you should have a much greater sample size than the 20 hives you report. You would want to make sure that your experiment had as few uncontrolled factors as is possible (a difficult task). 

While I'm here I'll point out one other logical fallacy Finman made. 
"During my beekeeping time yileds per hive have raised 4-fold. Biggest reason of this is 4-fold hives which do not swarm."

Once again, there is a claim that is unsubstantiated by sound scientific evidence. Just because B follows A does not mean that A causes B. In other words, just because yields have increased 4 fold during Finman's beekeeping years does not mean that the cause is a 4-fold hive that does not swarm. 
While this could certainly be the case, there isn't sufficient scientific evidence. Sample size is too small.

In conclusion
Finman, It seems as though you know quite a bit about beekeeping. I am sure that what you are doing with your queens is just fine and dandy. 

I only have a few years under my belt and only 13 hives. I raise my own queens and have found that they do just fine as long as they have sufficient space to expand. For a hobbyist, it seems difficult to justify a $16.00 queen when you can raise your own which is comparable in quality.


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## Finman (Nov 5, 2004)

I am Master in Science in biology. I have studied genetics in Helsinki University. I know enough what is genetics and what is science. 

When I started at age of 15 I had "german black rural stock" as we say. In those days beekeepers got 40 lbs per hive here. Soon I got Caucasians which origin was Canada. 

I don't want to make science. I just want big yields









Of course any hive will swarm if "conditions are met". Last year I lost 2 swarm because hives had capped honey from top to bottom board. But summer was over. I did not care.

I have had 20 years varroa but I am not going to raise "varroa tolerant stock" of my own. It is nonsence for small beekeeper. I bought "varroa tolerant stock" queens but they had as much mites as others. Oxalic acid trickling works well.

I clip wing of queens. It hinders swarm to escape.


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## Idahobeeguy (Feb 14, 2006)

Finman,

I'm certainly don't want to "make science" either. I do however find that when I go through the trouble of using the principles of science to investigate things in everyday life, that I am better able to draw useful conclusions. 

On a separate note, I am interested in finding out more about the oxalic acid methods used. If you would be willing to point to any references on this topic I would appreciate it.

Regarding the clipping of queens wings, won't the swarm still issue when one of the new queens hatches?


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## Finman (Nov 5, 2004)

clipping of queens wings gives time to do something. 

Finnish varroa concept

http://bees.freesuperhost.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1136436349

70% of our beeperes use trickling

http://bees.freesuperhost.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1136437131


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## Tors (Jan 6, 2006)

G'day Ken, I have collected a few swarms this year but only one stands out as worth breeding from. All the ferals bar one that I have collected have been mean and sting me. I got used to it , then suddenly I collected a swarm that does'nt need smoke or veil, its a big eye opener. The nasty ferals have been tested against comercial bred Italians and I did'nt find much difference in honey production although the Italians were much nicer bees and very easy to handle. 
When I was young I kept very kali bees in Tanzania, they would swarm and swarm down to swarms with only a cup full of bees, so I think swarming can be tied to genes. 

Alex King (K142)


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## carbide (Nov 21, 2004)

Ken,
I agree with Idahobeeguy. Since the swarm that you captured has turned into a gentle working hive, I don't see any problem with trying to raise a couple of queens from it to see if their offspring will be as gentle and easy working. Since you haven't had the colony long enough to determine if it is a strong producer, you may want to wait until next season to breed queens from it. However, if you are like me and are raising bees simply as a hobby and don't rely on honey sales to pay your bills, I would go ahead and raise a couple of queens from this colony this year.

The worst that could happen is that you get a couple of lazy or unpleasant hives from it that you could requeen with better genetics come this fall. Who knows, you may end up with some gentle gang buster hives by the end of this year. You'll never know if you don't try.

Good luck.


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## Hook (Jun 2, 2002)

Ken,
The swarm, I assume is feral? If so, being from the north, it is always good to have bees that winter well. I think it is a great idea to raise a few queens from them. I say go for it!


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## Bill Ruble (Jan 2, 2006)

I have injoyed reading this thread. It all makes me wonder if the Carniolan bees he talked about swarming so bad were treated exactly like the Italians. In my openion, you can't treat them the same. The Carnilians build up so fast in the spring, they might be ready to swarm sooner because of nowhere to go. It might SEEM like they swarm faster, but if they had differant managemtnt than the Italians it might not be the same.

I guess what I am saying is that some of the reason some people like one kind of bee better than another person is partly the management and partly the geogrophy or climate. There could be lots of reasons besides genetics. I fully believe genetics plays a very big infulence, but so does inviorment. 

Doing experiements it may seem like that if you treat each race exactly the same in a bee yard and then note the differences, you could then know the best bee, however, that does not allow for the difference in needed management with the various bees, So it may not actually reflect on the bee as much as you m ight think. Its kinda like raisng kids, you can't treat them all the same and come out the same. Ask me!! Iknow!!

Bill


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>It all makes me wonder if the Carniolan bees he talked about swarming so bad were treated exactly like the Italians. In my openion, you can't treat them the same.

I agree. It's easy to say one breed swarms more but fast buildup is a good thing and is usually the cause of unexpected swarming. I've never had a hive swarm if I was doing my job. I've seldom seen them not swarm if I wasn't. But the timing of that changes with a frugal bee with a rapid buildup.


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