In a message dated 99-04-15 11:36:54 EDT, [log in to unmask] (Allen Dick)
wrote:

<<  So what I am wondering is this:  what is the evidence?  What proof is
 there that, indeed, the bees do an inferior job when faced with an
 emergency situation?  It really does not stand to reason in that the bees
 have relied on this mechanism -- along with the two others -- for queen
 replacement for eons.

 Does anyone have any references or personal experience that confirms that
 the results of emergency queen rearing are indeed inferior? >>

    I have seen some sorry queens produced from emergency cells in midsummer
here when the old queen is failing. Usually in July, there is almost no flow,
and I have seen symptoms of starvation in some hives in a hot, dry year. Of
course I cannot separate the effect from the heavy doses of insecticide on
cotton bloom all through the area, and this may be the reason, both for the
queen failure and for the failure of the young queens.

   On the other hand, my first beekeeping mentor used to raise all his own
queens from emergency cells. He would start splitting around March 25,
whenever the first flow started here in South Carolina, and finish up about a
month later. The biggest drawback was that we had to find each queen (more
than 1000). The old queens got two frames of sealed brood, a frame of honey,
and the field force. Toward the end of the period, she would get three
frames. These were then taken north for apple pollination about May 5 -10 and
usually were very strong.

    The rest of the brood went into 5 frame nucs. All were made the same,
with three frames of brood, making sure there were some eggs, one frame of
honey, and one frame of comb or foundation.  These were carried to another
yard. He did not do any selection, unless the old queen was obviously
failing. There were still a lot of the old german black bees around here
then, and he had some seriously mean stock (a baptism of fire for a new
beekeeper).

    But the queen was usually a well fed, well bred one. I think the key was
that he always did it on the spring flow, when bees are predisposed to raise
queens anyway and drones were plentiful.

    I still raise some this way, but I prefer to use cells. I started off
using grafted cells, and still do some, but more often have plenty of swarm
cells. If I have has swarm cells, I do not look for the queen. I just divvy
up the brood frames so that each nuc gets a cell. If there are several on a
frame, I may cut one or two off and push the top of the cell into a frame of
brood. I've had good results that way.

    I don't automatically use cells from every colony. If a colony is mean,
has chalkbrood, or looks and smells poor, I will use the brood, but make sure
they have a cell from better stock. I don't do any selection for color. Just
health, productivity, gentleness. I like to pop the cover and see bees spill
over the edge of the box. Nice smelling, clean looking bees......!   In the
spring, I like to see lots of fat healthy drones, also. A hive that isn't
raising drones is suspect.....


Dave Green   SC  USA
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