# Re-queen with queen cells in a queen right hive?



## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

But if you place queen cells in the hive, assuming they survive, then they will go out and mate and potentially bring a fresh round of AHB genetics into the colony since you say you are in an area where that is possible. How is that an improvement? Maybe I am misunderstanding?

Nancy


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

enjambres said:


> But if you place queen cells in the hive, assuming they survive, then they will go out and mate and potentially bring a fresh round of AHB genetics into the colony since you say you are in an area where that is possible. How is that an improvement? Maybe I am misunderstanding?
> 
> Nancy


In my experience, it doesn't happen with a single re-queen. It has taken time for the hives to get meaner. I buy a mated queen, graft from her and then use her to re-queen. The problem occurs as a mated queen that picked up the gene on her mating flight, dies, swarms, whatever, they raise another, that is carrying the gene. On her mating flight she mates with drones with AHB and her offspring will be mean. Rinse, repeat and they are really mean. It doesn't always happen. I've caught swarms in this area that turn into very gentle hives and I've caught them that turned into very mean hives. It's taken 5 or 6 years to get to this point. 
I'm going to re-queen them all this year as my mean hives vastly outnumber my gentle one. I have two that are very docile.

I'm just hoping to not have to tear thru the really mean ones looking for a queen. Actually, if you can successfully re-queen with queen cells without finding the queens, I'll do it every year for some added swarm control. I bought a VSH breeder this year. Maybe I can get some Varroa resistance at the same time.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Robbin said:


> Does anybody here have any experience re-queening queen right hives with queen cells?


I've done it when I had extra cells. Seems to work most of the time. Has to be done on a good flow and the cells put up in the honey supers.


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## blackhat (Feb 3, 2018)

Michael Palmer said:


> I've done it when I had extra cells. Seems to work most of the time. Has to be done on a good flow and the cells put up in the honey supers.


So requeen during a flow without finding the queen, without disrupting the hive, and without the hassle and cost of cycling through a mating nuc? And without a break in egglaying? 

I guess the big disadvantage is you can't control the drone population as well in the outyards, and the probability of successfully taking control is probably below that of a mating nuc. Is there another drawback?


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Well then there's always the risk that the virgin won't return from her mating flight. Happens often enough. I prefer to use mated queens from my mating apiary.


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

blackhat said:


> And without a break in egglaying?


There is an egg laying break, while the Virgin gets ready for the mating flight and the mating flight. I actually like the idea of a short break and then a new queen to cut down on swarming. 
For me the biggest risk is what Michael Palmer pointed out. Virgin's not returning from their mating flight. That is a VERY big problem for me. I'm hoping it will be less so early in spring before the dragon fly swarms arrive, but in the summer, Almost 50% of my virgins don't return from their mating flights. I've re-queened some nucs early this year with swarm cells, and they returned. Hopefully that will be the case for early mating flights. I was hoping for some statistics, but I'm going to give this a try. The only way to be sure is to go to the trouble to mark the queen before adding the cell. 
I'll try it first in my nucs next spring where it is easy to find the queens.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Queen excluders inserted between the brood boxes will at least help you narrow down the job to a single box. If you only run a single brood box, make it into two, temporarily, to get the job done. Remove each frame that you examine to an empty box so you aren't just chasing her along if you miss her on the first pass.

Usually it's advised to minimize smoke when hunting queens, but if they are hot .......

Good luck,

Nancy


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## blackhat (Feb 3, 2018)

Robbin said:


> There is an egg laying break, while the Virgin gets ready for the mating flight and the mating flight. I actually like the idea of a short break and then a new queen to cut down on swarming.
> For me the biggest risk is what Michael Palmer pointed out. Virgin's not returning from their mating flight. That is a VERY big problem for me.


Both you and Michael mentioned virgins not returning, but I'm not exactly sure what impact you're concerned about. Is it that the hive could be left queenless? Or just that you would not have an good way of knowing and tracking the queenline unless you took the time to (a) mark the old queen AND (b) find the new queen after mating? 

I guess I may be unclear on what exactly the existing queen does after the cell is inserted as well. It seems most plausible that the bees are treating the cells as swarm or supercedure cells. If we're assuming the former the inherent downsides are prohibitive. Especially since you like the idea of a break to prevent swarming. 

In the case of supercedure there's no brood break as the queen "mother" keeps laying eggs until the new queen is ready to take over according to every source I've seen. In fact, I've seen several accounts of two queen hives after supercedure. And if supercedure is the mode of power exchange it prevents queenlessness due to virgin loss, though you still wouldn't know if the new queenline took over.

It's of course possible that the queen and her successor recognize each other as non-relatives and fight it out before the mating flights. I don't know why nature would have found such a mechanism adaptive given that it's unlikely in nature, but it can't be ruled out.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Michael Palmer said:


> Well then there's always the risk that the virgin won't return from her mating flight. Happens often enough.


I have read many variations on this, folks claiming return rates on virgins to mating nucs in the range of 95%, down to much lower numbers. A general theme when you read a lot on the subject, 95% is a reasonable expectation when mating queens at the ideal time of the year, ie, in the vicinity of 'best case'.



blackhat said:


> In the case of supercedure there's no brood break as the queen "mother" keeps laying eggs until the new queen is ready to take over according to every source I've seen. In fact, I've seen several accounts of two queen hives after supercedure.


In speaking with many folks on this subject over time, I've heard some folks suggest the percentage of mother/daughter colonies is as high as 10%, other say they have never seen it. The one thing that caught my attention in particular early last year, presentation at our local group by MP, talked about selecting for 'intelligent supercedure'. The conversation goes like this. Find the colony that has been a top 10 percentile honey producer for 7 years consecutively, never needed to be requeened in that timeframe. The suggestion then, they are good at superceding, and likely did not swarm in that time.

I'm a numbers guy, and beekeeping becomes a game of percentages when you get a significant number of colonies. No two colonies are identical, and to produce any amount of honey, it becomes a game of percentages and averages, so we do some math to figure things out, ie, where should the norms be. If a colony supercedes in a manner where there is only ever one queen in the hive, then based on the 95% number above, there is a 95% probability they will be successful, and there will be a short period between queens where no eggs are produced. 95% per year over a span of 7 years, results in a 70% probability that they will succeed 7 years in a row, or conversly, 30% probability one of the attempts will fail and the colony is left queenless after attempting to supercede. It also results in a short period of no eggs, which translates into a reduced forager force 6 weeks later. The numbers get worse if the requeening happened due to a swarm departing, not only is there a period of no eggs, half the bees left too.

Now do the numbers for the colony that supercedes by keeping the mother around until the daughter is well established. The probability of ending up queenless thru this process approaches zero, and they get a second chance if the virgin doesn't return from a mating flight. Right there, over the 7 year span this colony has a 30% survival advantage over the former. Now look at egg production. Assume the average queen lays 1500 eggs in a day, but the reason for replacement is reduced egg rate from the original queen. At the start of the supercedure process, queen is down to 1000 a day, and down to 500 a day by the time the new replacement is raised and in full gear. With the new daughter laying 1500 a day and the mother another 500, then we have 2000 eggs a day for a period, which results in a stronger forager force 6 weeks later. There will be a period of 3 or so weeks that starts 6 weeks after the new queen starts laying where the colony will have between 7 and 10 thousand extra foragers. 500 extra eggs a day for 2 to 3 weeks results in a lot of eggs that become foraging bees 6 weeks after the egg is placed in the cell. More numbers. We've probably all read how much honey one bee produces in it's life, and if you ask the question of google, it says 1/12 of a teaspoon. 10000 bees then is 833 teaspoons, or about 1.1 gallons. This trait then works out to roughly 10 to 15 lb of honey potential per colony based on generally accepted averages. In our area where overall honey production runs around 60 to 80lb per colony, that's a 10 to 20 percent production increase depending on years etc. Over a significant number of colonies, that is not an insignificant production increase.

With 700 colonies, over 7 years, the next question to ask, can we realistically discover this trait on that sample? The answer is yes, if other selection criteria are being used to reduce the selection pool. Honey production alone will identify the colonies that exhibit this trait over that time, so add in selection pressures for more things and the pool will be further reduced, and ultimately when enough criteria are applied, the short list becomes very short, but those on the list should be carrying this trait.

This is great, for somebody that has 700 colonies and 7 years of records. So now my question becomes, what about those of us with only 20 to 50 colonies, and without detailed records going back 7 years on each of them. The easiest way to get this trait into the apiary is of course, just buy some queens from the person that has already done the selection. Not possible for all of us, it's very difficult to buy queens from MP when you live in Canada, and that pre-supposes he will go thru the hassles of getting an export permit in the first place. I know he's done it before, but, not sure he wants to go thru the hassle / expense again. So what to do ?

Is it possible to sift thru our group and figure out if any of them will have a tendancy to keep mother around and laying as daughter becomes established ? Answer to this is yes, but, it's a lot of extra work that does not guarantee a result. Start the process with 20 to 50 colonies, if the 5% number is accurate and the trait is well spread thru the general population, then one or two of this group should be inclined to keep mother around while daughter starts laying. Go thru them all, mark queens, then place the cell into the colony in the supers. Go back 2 weeks later and hunt thru the colonies looking for the marked queen. In the colonies where you find the marked queen, continue searching for an unmarked queen. If / when you find one that has both the marked original queen, and the unmarked new queen, cage the marked original queen and put her into a different box. This is your breeder queen that carries the trait you are looking for. If the trait exists in 5% of the general population, then a sample of 20 has a 65% probability of one showing that trait, a sample of 50 approaches 94%. Did I mention, this is a LOT of work, and the result is not a guarantee ? If the trait exists in 20% of the general population, then your sample of 20 has a 98% probability of finding one, and it's virtually assured at 99.9% probability in a sample of 50.

Doing the math on all of this emphasized one thing to me. I raise queens, I dont pretend to be a breeder in the process. If I really want a specific trait that somebody else has done the selection work for, it's worth every penny of the cost of purchasing queens that somebody else has put the effort into selecting for.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I have put queen cells in queenright hives with good results most of the time. The numbers I've seen quoted are 80% acceptance.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

What % acceptance did you find?


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

grozzie2 says


> Now do the numbers for the colony that supercedes by keeping the mother around until the daughter is well established..........................


when do you typically see supercedure in your hives? is it at a time where these 'extra bees' contribute to production or 
at a time where they drain resources?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>What % acceptance did you find?

Probably right around that 80% mark but, of course, there are other circumstances that contribute, like a flow, warmer or cooler weather etc. I'd say it runs as high as 90% with ideal conditions and probably lower with less than ideal conditions.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

clyderoad said:


> when do you typically see supercedure in your hives?


I have no data, so, any answer would just be a guess. We started marking all the queens last year to get an idea, but, to really try track it one has to get into all the hives more often than we do. I try do weekly cell checks thru the time of year when swarming is predominant, but I abhor taking heavy honey supers off, so once they start putting honey in supers I dont normally dig into colonies unless there is an obvious reason I should. If I open a colony in late August after the supers are off, can I tell if they have replaced the queen between June and August, not likely. This is why we started marking queens last year, to get some actual data on the question.


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