# Getting queens back in the right hive



## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

What's your mating apiary setup look like? Production hives and mating hives in the same apiary? Close together? Or, are the mating hives off by themselves, with good landmarks? 30% seems awfully low, even if you have bird problems.


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## Dave Burrup (Jul 22, 2008)

We have 15 nucs in the bee yard with the 15 big hives. The nucs are set in a rather haphazard pattern with entrances of adjacent nucs facing different directions. Would painting them different colors help?


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

At what point in the season do you raise queens? I find highest returns early, like during the main spring flow. Success drops pretty quickly after the flow ends and the dragonfly population peaks. You're not having problems with cell acceptance, right?


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Dave Burrup said:


> We have 15 nucs in the bee yard with the 15 big hives. The nucs are set in a rather haphazard pattern with entrances of adjacent nucs facing different directions. Would painting them different colors help?


How far away are they from the big hives? I did the same thing when I started and I had miserable results. Moved my mating nucs to isolated locations, with excellent landmarks, and my results improved.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

If you can isolate the mating nucs from the production hives.
This way they are not that confused on their return mating flight.
Also, paint different color nucs easier for them to recognize their hive.
Lauri uses different plastic flowers as landmarks for her mating nucs. I may
as well try that too this coming queen rearing season.


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## Dave Burrup (Jul 22, 2008)

The nucs and production hives are close. Maybe that is the problem instead of birds. The queens are getting lost. and entering the wrong hives.
Astrobee our success improves after the days start to shorten, and the birds have raised their young. That is why I have pointed my finger at the birds.


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## Dave Burrup (Jul 22, 2008)

Would moving the nucs 300-400 feet be enough separation from the production hives? What colors would work best?


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## Mbeck (Apr 27, 2011)

Michael Palmer said:


> How far away are they from the big hives? I did the same thing when I started and I had miserable results. Moved my mating nucs to isolated locations, with excellent landmarks, and my results improved.


Can you explain what you feel are "excellent landmarks"? Are they large cues like roads and cellphone towers marking the location of entire yards or small marking the location of individual mating Nucs ?


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Use the lay of the land. Bushes, hedgerows, brush piles, large boulders. Separate by distance. Place in large circles, or individually next to landmark. Make it easy for the queens to orient. Get them away from production hives where activity might attract an incoming virgin.


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## Dave Burrup (Jul 22, 2008)

Thanks for the info.


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## Mbeck (Apr 27, 2011)

Michael Palmer said:


> Use the lay of the land. Bushes, hedgerows, brush piles, large boulders. Separate by distance. Place in large circles, or individually next to landmark. Make it easy for the queens to orient. Get them away from production hives where activity might attract an incoming virgin.


Thanks, I looked through some of your videos to get some ideas, relived you didn't suggest Mountains, hills or cornfields we don't have many of those things!

This one briefly shows the circle

http://youtu.be/cuSNQIlRoSk


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Yep, so each circle has eight 4-way mating nucs. It's wide enough so the returning queens know where their circle is, and where on the circle their entrance is located. In the mating apiary, I have 16 circles...4 groups of 4 circles, with eight 4-ways in each circle. Circles are separated by 20' of tall grass, that I leave uncut. Groups are separated by hedgerows and brush piles and distance. I catch one group every 4 days.


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## Dave Burrup (Jul 22, 2008)

Why circles?


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Dave Burrup said:


> Why circles?


I think circles are better than rows for reducing drift, so with circles, I can place more mating nucs in my allotted space on the farm.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Here is an example of how we place our nucs when they are on 4 way pallets. It's nice to have them in some sort of discernable row so they can be systematically worked, yet with entrances placed at odd angles. We typically "catch" in the 80 to 85% range despite the adjoining entrances.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

One method of increasing mating success is to paint large pieces of plywood and distribute them through the mating yard as landmarks. Red, Blue, violet, and Yellow appear as separate colors to the bees. It is also important to use as much distance between mating nucs as possible. There is no such thing as a good distance number, it all depends on landmarks. If there are lots of very good landmarks such as bushes, trees, or man-made markers, then the mating nucs can be closer together. If they are in an open area with nothing but grass, separate them a lot more and put up some artificial landmarks.

I have a yearly problem with summer tanagers eating bees. If you look them up, they are a close relative of the cardinal and are not actually tanagers. They are beautiful birds, but a pair of them will catch several hundred bees per day.

http://westmtnapiary.com/Bees_and_color.html


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

Ah, when we picked up our first nucs, the nuc yard was made up of 4-way pallets of nucs. Interesting to see that it is a known layout.

We got 100% success this summer, on a sample of two, so the success rate is undoubtedly pure luck. But we did it by putting one nuc at a neighbor's place half a mile away, and the second nuc (with the original queen) in a spot with a very unique entrance about 100 ft from the apiary. The original hive raise a queen right where they had always been. I was rather surprised when the whole process worked lickety-split, as fast as the book said was possible, and the only fatalities seemed to be the queens that did not hatch first.


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

Queens are far better than most realize at learning and returning to the correct nuc or hive. Commercial queen rearing operations place thousands of mini nucs out on flat areas. Some paint their boxes different colors, some do not... Trees, and such are helpful, but don't overly concern yourself with the details. Properly raised queen cells, properly stocked mating nucs and the right time of year go a long way to improving "mating success".


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Just to mention - symbols painted near each entrance on the nuc's probably help more than colors. A black triangle, three red balls, a green square, 4 wavy orange lines, a cartoon if you want to be artistic, etc. - just make sure they look *DIFFERENT* from each other.

While you're at it, go ahead and number your nuc's. If you are running 40 of them, and the queens in #27 and #32 are doing surprisingly well, make a note in your yard sheet. They just might be your breeders next year. 

Also don't forget to brand the nuc's. That should make them your's for ever, although there may be some thieves stupid enough to steal branded hive boxes.


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

kilocharlie said:


> While you're at it, go ahead and number your nuc's. If you are running 40 of them, and the queens in #27 and #32 are doing surprisingly well, make a note in your yard sheet. They just might be your breeders next year.
> .


Just as long as it is not the brood & bees from the _previous_ queen that are responsible for the exceptional vigor. Have to give credit where credit is due. And maybe more importantly, not give credit to a queen that is not worthy of it and use her as a breeder when she might not be quite what you think she is.

I mark each nuc with tape and details about the cell /virgin that was installed.(Breeder queen type, identification #, date) When I remove the mated queen and install a new cell, I don't remove the tape, I add new tape over the top so if I want to know what queen was removed, all I have to do is peel back the top layer of tape and my info is available. By the end of the season, some of the nucs will have several layers of tape.










This comes in handy if the nuc was overly impressive and the new queen had not been in there long enough to have her first hatch of brood. Although that queen is likely long gone, I at least know what breeder queen the graft was from and can reproduce it if I wish. 

Also if the nuc had a failed mated return and made it's own queen. I at least still know what line of bees that queen came from.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Thanks for ramping up the idea, Lauri. Better record keeping makes better beekeepers, especially when they re-read the data and think about what it's telling them.


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

kilocharlie said:


> Thanks for ramping up the idea, Lauri. Better record keeping makes better beekeepers, especially when they re-read the data and think about what it's telling them.


Yes, I am cereful to give credit where credit is due. This capped brood is from the first eggs laid by the newly mated queen, but the honey collection is from the previous queens bees. 










This new queen when she emerges will have nothing to do with this mating nuc's apparent vigor, until she lays it up herself and her brood emerges and takes over.










Just one note, A young, well mated queen with strong pheromone can inspire an old colony to grab a gear though. But all in all, I think you have to give the credit to the previous queen in these cases. 

And a brood break benefit with each round can also give the appearance of vigor when mite loads are lightened. June queens appear superior, but you have to consider the nectar flow benefits at that time and not give full credit to a 'good batch of June queens'


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Also, if you can start Lauri's habit of photographing frames and keeping track of them, you can really document a queen's progress, her buildup timing, and a lot of other of her properties.

Your yard sheet book should have photo pouch pages to go with each hive's records, timeline, traits, weights, yields, etc. This will really help a lot of beekeepers improve their game.


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

kilocharlie said:


> Also, if you can start Lauri's habit of photographing frames and keeping track of them, you can really document a queen's progress, her buildup timing, and a lot of other of her properties.
> 
> Your yard sheet book should have photo pouch pages to go with each hive's records, timeline, traits, weights, yields, etc. This will really help a lot of beekeepers improve their game.


I appreciate the value in that, and I have photographed frames and gone back to get numbers off of them, that seems like a lot of work for commercial beekeepers. But it also sounds like a nice science project for some smart young beekeeper with computer skills. I think it should be possible to develop software to count bees, and to the extent visible (a strong hive will have frames nearly obscured by bees) get an estimate of brood, stores, etc. A camera could also capture an ID tag on the frame. Have a voice controlled camera on your hood, tell the camera when to snap, and let a computer tabulate the results into a nice database.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Yeah, really a hobbyist / sideliner thing, but a commercial could do just the mating nuc's for an employee training course, or perhaps to distinguish his last few breeder candidates, if he wanted to. 

One of my buddies runs 60 to 80 queen rearing colonies during the peak of the season, to much work to photograph 4,000 nuc's, but it might reveal who the best breeder queens are. At the commercial level, you eyeball it quickly and keep moving. 20 hour days are the norm, and there are still things that don't get done, so photographing stuff is pretty much out of the question, but a small-timer trying to grow an apiary into a sideline operation could benefit from the photos.


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

One method the pros use is to learn to estimate what's on a frame very quickly. To do that you make up a bunch of frame photos, actually measure and do a count, and then use these shots like flash cards to train to eyeball the amount of stores, brood, etc, and estimate the number of bees. The good ones can get within 10% or so. I'm told. I'm not one of them.

But with modern tech, I think a camera with a small computer could do this. A smart phone or tablet probably has enough processing power. To make the gadget useful, it needs to be cheap, quick, and require as little fiddling as possible. With my cameras, we need one person to hold and turn the frame, and another to take the shot, plus a way to record which frame it was. So the pros who can eyeball the results instantly and then jot them down on a chart come out way ahead.

Picture this routine. You look down at the hive's label and say "Take QR". The camera on your hood snaps the QR code and identifies the hive, opening a new page on the database for that hive. You then pull each frame in order, maybe say the frame and side, and shoot each side, all by voice command. "Super 4, Frame 1 Side 1 Snap. Side 2 Snap." In the background, a visual analysis program counts the bees, spots the queen (maybe), and identifies what is on the frame to the degree that it is visible. This would take no longer than pulling the frames and looking at them. I think it would have to be that slick to work for the commercial guys. One big benefit would be that they could get by with fairly inexperienced helpers. This kind of tech might also make an impartial way to judge commercial hives on pollination jobs.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

A lot of the bee estimators are college students. Yep, they get training, not quite like you envision. Photos and real world practice, and compare your estimates to the experienced estimators and to some actual count-out frames. For me, shot brood is harder to estimate than solid brood.


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