Hi all...I'd love to get into the AFB discussion...but as Allen pointed out, it takes a lot of time to do so properly, and I simply don't have it at the moment.
With that said, earlier, I had asked if anyone had any info on pheromones in the JZBZ plastic cages.
I've been emerging virgins in glass vials in an incubator (so as to keep them from absorbing any smells from a hive, other virgins, plastic or wood, etc).
As some list members observed at our conference, the glass vials start to get nasty after about 48 hours...and the queens get stuck.
I had one queen that was kept several days before introducing, and I ended up putting her in a JZBZ cage for the last 18 hours or so. Sam Comfort introduced her into a queenless nuc where a previous introduction had apparently failed (couldn't find the virgin in the nuc). I've posted about this previously, and a short video of how this older virgin is being accepted:
http://www.vimeo.com/13861928
From this, I became curious if there were or weren't pheromones in the cage, and if they were having a positive effect on introduction.
I have the JZBZ cages, and I also ordered caps for them...the caps are pinkish in color. I haven't used these much, and never observed a mated queen in one for any extended period.
The other day, I had a few virgins in cages (their glass vials were getting dirty) on the kitchen table...they were all lodged at the end of the tube pressed up against the cap...some had even died there.
With 2 live ones left on the table, I removed the cap from one and replaced it with a wad of toilet paper (no scent), and balanced a couple of caps on the middle of the cage (over the mesh), and sure enough...the queen with the cap stayed lodged against the cap, and the other one went between the tube (I expect there was some residual smell from where the cap had been...I should repeat with a new cage) and where I had the caps placed.
Whatever the smell is in these caps (intentional pheromone placement, or off gassing plastic), do they have the same effect on mated queens? Has anyone else noticed this?
On another note, in a recent journal article, Larry Conner suggests not direct releasing virgins...his reasoning seemed to be that they can fly away during release. I can imagine some reasons for not direct releasing virgins..but I don't think of this as one of them. Would anyone bother grafting or going out in the field without more than they expect to need (given that there are potential losses at every step)?
For us, direct releasing virgins has been working. Next year we will experiment more with direct releasing into queenright colonies for supercedure.
deknow
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