# An opinion on a fair trade.



## Bass (Mar 30, 2015)

I saved a hive last year at a friend's farm. A breeder that had a few hives there once abandoned them years ago and they lost contact with him. there was only one surviving colony in broken boxes. I managed to get new boxes and frames and they are doing great now. 
A large scale beekeeper knows the original breeder and he is highly interested in producing queens from this strain of bees. They are a variety of a Russian that is rare and he wants to produce queens. 
What would be a fair trade for a couple brood frames?
I really wanted to split the hive myself and produce a queen. 
Anyone been in a similar satiation?


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## awebber96 (May 28, 2012)

Have him come and take the old queen and make himself a nuc. You could charge him a fair price for the nuc in your area. Or trade him for a nuc from one of his best hives. You could also ask him to graft you a few queen cells for your own purposes later to sweeten it.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

It is better if you can save this queen's genetics for
your future expansion. The drones are more valuable to
pass on this rare variety of Russian. So don't let him take
away your queen. Keep her in your apiary.
Some will switch her and you cannot tell the difference unless 
she is a marked queen. At the right time do a split to make some
queens. If he is still interested then tell him to bring over a frame
of drawn worker cells to take some eggs home. He can do a graft
to continue this lineage. For the exchange tell him to bring a 5 frames
nuc over without the queen for the eggs. Then you can make 2 splits instead of one.
You can also put out bait hives for some more bees and do a graft from this
queen to increase your hive numbers.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

All he should need is one frame with a good amount of eggs. Perhaps just give him the frame with the understanding that he provides you with 4 to 5 queen cells? Have him bring a nuc with bees and then place your frame directly into that nuc. Make sure you keep the queen.


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## mbc (Mar 22, 2014)

Bass said:


> I saved a hive last year at a friend's farm. A breeder that had a few hives there once abandoned them years ago and they lost contact with him. there was only one surviving colony in broken boxes. I managed to get new boxes and frames and they are doing great now.
> A large scale beekeeper knows the original breeder and he is highly interested in producing queens from this strain of bees. They are a variety of a Russian that is rare and he wants to produce queens.
> What would be a fair trade for a couple brood frames?
> I really wanted to split the hive myself and produce a queen.
> Anyone been in a similar satiation?


Let him come with a damp towel and a sharp knife to harvest some comb with larvae of the right age for grafting and don't charge at all but ask for a virgin queen in return if the graft is successful. Letting him bring a drawn comb for your queen to fill with eggs as beepro suggested is madness imho as it would be a considerable risk of cross contamination of pathogens, afb being of most concern.


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## johnbeejohn (Jun 30, 2013)

30 $ for a frame of eggs sound sweet to me


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Bass said:


> They are a variety of a Russian that is rare and he wants to produce queens.


How in the world does this guy have a clue what's in the box since he hasn't done anything with them in years? Could be a swarm from a package in July for all he knows, right?


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## Riskybizz (Mar 12, 2010)

yup that's right


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## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

Those were my sentiments exactly. As I recall these hives were left on someone's farm and the beekeeper had not returned for a good while the farmer had not even see him in over a year. There is no way of knowing how many times these bees have requeened and what each subsequent queen has bred with. If these are even the same bees, the original stock could have died out. The hives then occupied with feral bees of who knows what breeding. You can take it to any extreme you wish give him some stock to try to prove out their qualities. Or get him for all you can because they are such special bees. Caveat emptor. Who knows what the other guy is trying to sell you.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

If AFB is a concern then ask him to bring over the
newer clean comb. With that many hives he have any
potential disease will wipe out his commercial operation.
I'm sure he knows how to keep the bee diseases in control.
And if your bees are that special then they can clean up the hive too.


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## My-smokepole (Apr 14, 2008)

I have a deal with a friend and local beekeeper. In the past I have bought some hard to get queens. We have place them at his yard at his house. And he grafted the cells from her. When they where ripe I got 50% of the cells. Unfortunately this queen didn't make the winter for what ever reason. But her some 50 daughters did.


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

jwcarlson said:


> How in the world does this guy have a clue what's in the box since he hasn't done anything with them in years? Could be a swarm from a package in July for all he knows, right?


You took the words right out of my mouth. Or off my fingers  I should say.


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## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

My-smokepole said:


> I have a deal with a friend and local beekeeper. In the past I have bought some hard to get queens. We have place them at his yard at his house. And he grafted the cells from her. When they where ripe I got 50% of the cells. Unfortunately this queen didn't make the winter for what ever reason. But her some 50 daughters did.


 Assuming the queen you bought was bred to like drones her daughters would carry the desired trait, but what were her daughters bred to? each successive generation's genetics could be diluted by an exponential decay. In a scant 5 generations the bees will only have 3% of the original queen's genetic profile.


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## Bass (Mar 30, 2015)

Thanks for all your comments. 
This morning I spoke with the breeder, he knew the original keeper who started that hive about 10 years ago. The original beek didn't check these hives for over 7 years. He's surprised they're lived on their own, without any treatment. There was a dead colony due to hive collapsing in previous winter. I'm sure the bees have replaced their original queen by now at least once. 
He said they are from Glenn apiary, and they were bred for verroa resistance (VSH possibly). They're no longer in business.
He offered to give me several of the queens for a frame of eggs, which I think is fair enough.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Bass said:


> This morning I spoke with the breeder, he knew the original keeper who started that hive about 10 years ago. The original beek didn't check these hives for over 7 years. He's surprised they're lived on their own, without any treatment.


This "breeder" cannot seriously believe that there's much likelihood that it's the same "line" of bees...

Several queens for a frame of eggs is a good deal though, I'd take that. Even if it is the same line it's been 7 years, likely the queen was replaced yearly or twice yearly or more. So it's many generations removed from the original queen. Not saying they shouldn't be bred from... it just seems delusional to believe it's the same type of bee now. Whatever queen is in there now is basically the same as whatever bees inhabit the area surrounding.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Bass said:


> He offered to give me several of the queens for a frame of eggs, which I think is fair enough.


These will be 2016 mated queens, right? The lineage of this queen aside, 3 mated queens for a frame of eggs is a very good trade. As others have suggested, your local "breeder" seems very naive to make this assumption on the lineage, and you haven't given us any other information other than "they are doing great" that might suggest that there is anything particularly special to what now lives in this box. My suggestion is to evaluate the colony this season and collect some objective data, particularly mite levels throughout the season and of course production data.


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## tech.35058 (Jul 29, 2013)

I guess I am pretty naive.
last year ( fall 2014) I was given a hive from the estate of an older guy whom had passed away, kids older than me & I'm 62, cleaning up the place to sell.
boxes were very old style, non-removable combs in the brood box, crumbling, etc.
As stated, these may be recent swarm move ins, or leftovers inbred for years, but I am very pleased to have them. I got one queen/nuc out of them last summer (no, I am not a very "good" beekeeper).
these bees seem fairly gentle, had almost no shb, & seemed to tolerate some wax moths gunked up heavily with propalis. the parent colony & the nuc both seemed slow to build up, but so did the other nucs with queens from other sources.
One of my goals is to make more from this hive, although all progeny will be open mated.
I am pleased to have these "unknown bees". As to the future, we shall see. 
About the price of eggs ... a local guy sold me deep frames of brood & bees for $20 each my first year. CE


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