Hello Dave & All,

I suppose a beekeeping discussion list would work better if divided into the
different categories of beekeeper. At our American Beekeeping Federation
meetings we do break our workshops down this way. George I. of our list many
times does the hobby.
A noted queen breeder does the queen breeders and a commercial beekeeper
does the sideline & commercial people.

The beekeepers which make a living (or try to) from bees look at things very
differently than the hobby and even many sideliners. Most commercial see
things similar but I never met two beekeepers which kept bees in exactly the
same way.

The way we keep bees in the U.S. is very different than in the U.K. and our
methods might not be needed in the U.K. and the U.K methods might not work
for us (as Murray pointed out).

That said I will try and answer Dave's questions from my perspective.

>The whole business of regularly replacing queens is outside of my
experience.

It is a PROVEN fact that a older queen can fail at any time due to many
factors AND pheromone levels tend to drop as the queen ages. I agree there
are exceptions but most commercial beekeepers are not willing to take the
chance on queen failure so regularly replace old queens. Three year queens
are picked on the most but there are beekeepers which replace queens every
year.


>I reckon to breed new queens on the basis of improving the quality of
stock, not because the old ones are 'worn out', but British queens have a
longer working life than it seems is usual in US.

There is truth in what Dave says about queens in the U.K. with a longer
working life. Queens in high honey production areas actually do wear
theirselves out at the pace they keep. In areas of low production a queen
might indeed last longer as far as becoming a drone layer.

>..It seems to me that the high level of queen cell building that Bob is
expecting,

When I kept bees in Flroida which is considered tropical the bees were
content to maintain a small level of brood rearing. To increase brood
rearing to get larger honey crops certain manipulations were done not unlike
the manipulations Murray uses.

>would come from the bees recognising some deficiency in the queens... Is
this deficiency part of a wearing out process or was it present when the
queen was new?

I thought everyone knew that if you seperate the brood nest far enough that
the queens pheromones are not strong in the isolated section that bees  will
make queen cells.

Quite a bit of unknown exists on the question of why bees build queen cells.
One of the strange things I have learned from the keeping of the Russian
strain this year has been that the bees many times will keep a single queen
cell in reserve and tear down before hatching. Then start another and then
tear down before hatching.
Very strange but  true and talked about on BEE-L by Charlie Harper. I never
saw another race of bees  due this *on a regular basis* but I have seen the
phenomenon before in late spring.

Maybe Charlie H. will comment. I believe Charlie and I are running the
largest number of Russian queens from members on the list but would love to
hear any comments from others which have got Russian bees about their
observations.

The most common cause for the making of supercedure cells is a low pheromone
level from the queen but there are other reasons we know about and I AM SURE
a few we do not know about!

Sincerely,
Bob Harrison
Missouri, U.S.A.

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