Content-Type: |
text/plain; charset=UTF-8 |
Date: |
Tue, 15 Sep 2020 13:24:35 +0000 |
Reply-To: |
|
Subject: |
|
MIME-Version: |
1.0 |
Message-ID: |
|
Content-Transfer-Encoding: |
7bit |
Sender: |
|
From: |
|
Parts/Attachments: |
|
|
When I am done with a cell builder I generally give them a virgin queen or a queen cell near emerging. All the bees in the cell builder give a nuc that builds up fast. Some years ago I had such a cell builder that came up queenless. By the time I realized they were queenless they had spent three weeks as a cell builder and another three weeks waiting for a queen. They were broodless this whole time except for the frame of mostly sealed brood and a little open brood I gave them when I made the cell builder. At the time I did not have another queen or cell to give them when I realized they were queenless six weeks after forming the cell builder. Knowing that queenless bees live a long time like winter bees I did nothing for another couple of weeks to make sure they were really queenless. So, at that point they had been queenless for eight weeks and broodless, including no grafts for five weeks.
I gave that nuc two grafted JZBZ queen cups pressed into the comb. At the 24 hour point both had a very small amount of jelly in them and at 48 hours were empty. I gave two more grafted cells. Much the same result, but a bit more jelly at 24 hours, but still less than normal. I gave two more grafted cells. They did a bit better this time and kept one cell alive for three days. I kept giving them two fresh grafts as soon as the old grafts were destroyed. After doing this about six times they raised two perfect looking sealed queen cells which I left to emerge. The result was a mated queen in a few weeks that seemed to perform perfectly normally.
So, here was a colony that consisted of nothing but old bees. By the time they raised a queen the youngest workers from the sealed brood given the cell builder must have been two months old and most were older. The nuc had about four frames of bees. It seemed they needed training to get them to raise a queen from the grafts as each set of grafts was slightly better in terms of amount of jelly and length of time before they tore them down until they got to the point they raised a queen. When they finally were successful the cells they produced were good looking cells. One was a good half inch longer than a normal queen cell. Absolutely huge.
We have all heard many times that a longer term queenless hive often will not raise a queen if given brood and eggs. You need to give a frame of brood and eggs two or three times to get them to raise a queen. Based on my observation on that queenless nuc I do not think the bees need brood pheromone to get them to raise a queen. What they need is training on feeding larva. It may simply be that such training simply allows older workers to revert their glands to produce jelly and such reversion takes time. But clearly old bees can revert and make enough quality jelly to raise a good queen.
In fact I have many times had brand new cell builders that failed to raise a single queen from the first round of grafts. What I see is some are started ok then they are destroyed on day two or three after grafting. As soon as that first round had failed 100% I gave a new set of grafts and had them raise some queen cells on the second try. Sometimes both the first and second grafts failed but the third was ok. I make cell builders with lots of young bees. So, I lean towards training as being part of the explanation for grafts to fail. Now, you might blame it on my pathetic skills at grafting. But, I doubt that. My reason is very often all or most of the grafts started are clumped together farthest back on the frame from the entrance. If it was my poor grafting skills I would not expect such clumping so frequently.
Getting bees to raise a queen is half magic and half persistence in my experience.
Dick
***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
|
|
|