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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