Hi to all on BEE-L

John Edwards (fwl absconding to north)replying to Allen
Dick wrote:

> The real payoff, if it is true, is that I'm told that
such bees tolerate multiple queens.  Lusbys claim to smoke
in virgins successfully and get multi-queen hives as a
result.

Reply:
What Allen says above is true. Most all our hives tolerate
multiple queens. But we have always worked with this. It is
an *old style* beekeeping practice for use when needed.

Yes, we smoke in virgins successfully and quite often end
up with both the old queen and new virgin both laying on
the same frame. It is nothing hard.

 Even demonstrated to Dr Eric Erickson at the Tucson Bee
Lab back in the 1980s after we talked about doing it and
showed him with the labs observation hives how it worked.

 It's not a hard process to describe to other beekeepers to
do and how it works, and it sure saves time and labor, and
back driving expenses on fall and early spring requeening
and the success rate is quite high.

John Edwards responded:
I'm not aware that thelytoky and multiple queen toleration
are necessarily linked traits.

Reply:
This is probably something that needs to be really checked
out and verified. Since I am not a union card member, it
would be more practable for a real scientist to do this.

All I can say is our bees have been proved to show
thelytoky for well over a decade now and yes we do use
methods that encompass multipe queens that our hives do
tolerate.

John then continued writing:
 Multiple queens from ahb swarms have been well known and
described for some time, but the thelytoky link is a new
one for me.

Reply:
Yes John, multiple queens from AHB swarms have been well
know and described, but we are not talking small commando
type swarms here that then leave. We are talking multiple
queens staying and used within the same colony, as when
used the *old way* for multiple queen system management.

Now, before I go further, let me say, we do see absorption
in both early spring and late fall with our colonies now
that we are back onto a complete natural clean sustainable
system of beekeeping again. We also purposefully do it in
capturing swarms this absorbing, and in the act, multiple
queens are tolerated with the swarms above the queen
*includer* now rather then used as a queen *excluder* to
build strong one deep nucs to start comb drawing with and
obtian better winter-carry over.

John continued:
 As far as
multiple queens, Steve Taber told me of an old beekeeper
getting into adiscussion at a bee club meeting about this,
and showing up at the next meeting with an observation hive
with seven queens on one comb, supposedly on the east
coast in the 1950s-60s. Please educate me on this.

Reply:
This I would believe, knowing it is an old trick to show
new comers how to keep bees and queens.

Regards,

Dee A. Lusby



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