--- On Fri, 3/5/10, Trevor Weatherhead <[log in to unmask]> wrote:  concerning virgin queens mating with drones from the same yard.   

That was a great response Trevor.  In just that one post I learned loads of concepts I had never contemplated before.  With what you have given me I can now contemplate possibly selecting most of the drones with which I wish my virgins to mate.   I will have to give a lot of contemplation to the concepts you've presented.   By the way, even this early in the season, with the exceptionally cold season we've had this past month and a half, I discovered a capped queen cell.  

I had a box in which the colony had drawn comb from the inner cover in a box which I had been using for feeding with syrup in used paint cans.  I separated that box from the rest of the hive below with another inner cover so that the bees would rob out the honey that had been stored in the comb.  Today I went in to remove the "empty" comb and discovered that my queen had been up in there and then descended back down to the main hive complex.  Anyway, evidently the separation was sufficient to cause the bees above the inner cover to start constructing queen cells.  

I have separated the bees and comb above the inner cover by placing the inner cover on top of a nuc box and will see if a queen hatches out and mates.  I'm thinking that the cell is about the fourteenth or fifteenth day.  I will check for bees flying from the nuc and in about ten days see if there is evidence that the queen has started laying.

Mike in LA



      

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