On 29 Jun 99, at 13:06, Lloyd Spear wrote:

 > The splits I have been making and will make until July 15 are of the
 > "walk-away" type.  This means I let them raise their own queen.  After
 > July 15 I will either give them a queen cell or a laying queen.  (I
will
 > only get about 80% good queens from my "walk-away" splits;

 I hate to say this, but that bit is bad advice in light of some new
information we would like to present.
        We have been raising queens commercially for some 7-8 years now, and
part of this has been the following of pedigrees, where the queens came
from and how they were made and an evaluation of their final traits.
Copius notes have now been condensed and the results are very suprising
and controversial, in fact even now I can't  belive the results as they
are contrary to popular teaching.
        Some time ago we were persuaded to add a mix of the latest 'exotics' to
our yards,using their drones to improve our mating diversity. To maintain
the genetics we would pinch out the old queen and allow the daughter to
take over the hive. In effect a 'walk away split', worse thing we ever
did!
         We noticed a general increase in aggression over the years but being
busy didn't think to much about it till last year when those bees would
meet you at the gate with their stingers out and ready. Finally in
desperation we had to cull a full hive, being just too bad to handle, as
bad as any AHB.
        In Oct last, Varroa entered our area and unbeknown to us these angry
hives were robbing out hives dying from Varroa, they brought back
thousands which eventually killed them. The other hives in that same yard,
all grafted queens had small amounts of Varroa on examination, but they're
still viable.
        This year we are back to where we started, T-shirt and shorts to handle
hives and very, very few stings and those usually caused by my clumsiness!
         Self made queens are regressive, allow it to happen over more than 2
generations and the quality goes backwards. Believe it or not we had hives
which wouldn't make wax, others that wouldn't make cells as a cell
builder. The pattern suffered and the increase in chalk brood was quite
remarkable and finally we had one that produced tons of brood, but no
honey!
        Once a queen regresses it is impossible to improve by regrafting, in
other words the trait is fixed. We did find that requeening an angry, and
regressed hive with a grafted queen would almost instantly improve it.
Which would point out that anger is not genetic, but something lacking in
the queen.
        With all these new facts in front of us a number of decisions have been
made. NO MORE self made or emergency queens, only grafted, marked queens.
If a hive drops a marked grafted queen it will be replaced immediately
before it has time to make drones.
        Before someone says this is a ploy to sell more queens, it isn't, just a
genuine wish to present facts we've gleaned over the last few years of
intense observation.
        Take my advise. If you want clean, well mannered, hard working bees then
don't allow self made, emergency queens to live any longer than absolutely
necessary.

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The Bee Works, 9 Progress Drive, Unit 2,
Orillia, Ontario, Canada.L3V 6H1.
Phone (705)326 7171 Fax (705)325 3461
David Eyre, Owner
e-mail<[log in to unmask]>
http://www.beeworks.com
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