In message <[log in to unmask]>, Dave Cushman
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>But to return to our beekeeping remit, you raise 2 or 3 thousand queens
>a year, what percentage are raised by deliberate queen rearing methods
>as opposed to those generated as a result of colony manipulations like
>splitting ?
>
Way off topic on this thread Dave, however, as always there is no short
answer. Other than 'it depends' I suppose.
Long answer is that each of the two teams we have working the season has
to do ONE bar of grafts every day. A graft is 32 cells. Average
acceptance is 22 to 26 ( though we have had 31 a few times, never a 32,
and have sometimes had a zero, usually when you KNOW conditions are not
favourable but take a chance anyway)............so between the two teams
that's 44 to 52 a day. Most mothers are actually selected in the summer
and autumn of the previous year, based on performance that season, in
particular at our key heather crop, and also fitting a range of other
criteria, none of which are set in concrete, just have to have enough
good characteristics.
The grafts are prepared on site, in the mother colony. ( Colony is
specially selected, mother queen is taken away in a 5 bar nuc to another
place, all her extra brood is given away to other colonies in the yard,
her honey has all the bees shaken off and also given to other hives. The
pollen bars are retained and go in the middle of the brood box with the
graft placed in between, then the box is filled up with fresh combs and
a spare one placed somewhere secure for insertion on the next visit when
the grafts are removed. This cell builder is strong, with a big
workforce bringing pollen, and lots of nurse bees. It is in a single
deep, and almost full of bees.
Its a simple one visit quick and dirty system, and the bar of grafts is
ready next time back at that group. The grafts are always harvested by
the other team, as the squads go round on a 20day schedule, thus
arriving at 10 day intervals. Thus a bar of 10 day old grafts are there
to be used, and this system continues over a period of 6 to 8 weeks. (We
work 7 days a week in summer, so 6 weeks is 42 working days, which
probably means around 1800 grafted cells used.) On arrival at the first
yard you have a carrier nuc on the back of the truck with some of the
day befores cells in them, all being incubated by a liberal covering of
bees. Also on the truck are a stack of mini nucs, all prepared with
candy and ready for filling. A number are prepared at the first yard and
any surplus cells are placed in them and taken home that night to spend
2 or 3 days in the dark.
Nucleus boxes ( Tegart type from Canada) are also prepared during the
day on an ad hoc basis, just as time and opportunity allows, and these
too have cells added. Sometimes we come across colonies of good
character that through no fault of their own have prepared queen cells.
If all else is good about the colony, and the swarming has an
identifiable cause other than just plain swarminess, then we will use
those cells too, especially in the Tegart boxes as they are already
familiar to the bees and well secure on their frames.
So any graft of cells are likely to be used in a variety of ways, in
splits, in nucs, and in mini nucs.
The graft harvest that morning is placed in the incubator box and taken
onwards with us for use in the yards we meet the rest of the day, and
also for the first yard next morning. If there is any suspicion that
hatching might be imminent the cells are caged. The cell bars are our
own design with rotatable cell bars inside a standard Langstroth deep
frame, spaced correctly so that hair roller cages can be fitted onto the
cups and rotated back to the vertical position, where the cages can only
drop by a couple of millimeters and thus no queen escape is possible.
These are Nicot cell materials we are using, secured onto our own style
cell bars.
As I mentioned earlier we try to mate the queens away from the apiary of
their birth, but as with so many things, these are, in the words of an
old sea captain I served with many years ago, 'guidelines, not
tramlines' so if you need cells in the apiary of the graft and you only
have cells from the graft you just use them anyway.
Once you removed the graft from the raising colony you stick a few bars
of brood in it, check to bars adjacent to the graft for cells (you
sometimes find one or two, missed eggs in the pollen bars usually, and
destroy them, add one cell from the graft ( the better acceptance of her
own scented cells outweighs the need to use unrelated stock) and let
them get on with it. Each colony is used for ONE bar of cells only, and
recovery time of the mothers nuc is very rapid and goes on the make a
full harvest at the heather that year.
So back to the original question.......what percentage are deliberately
raised rather than just normal split queens? I don't know, probably
close to 65%. The bulk of the early Apidea ones are from grafts and
probably about 50% of the ones in the Tegart nucs.
Thinking I REALLY should have started a new thread with this answer.
Will go back to the top and try do so.
--
Murray McGregor
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