In message <000001c3f696$d68eb5b0$11e5fea9@your>, Tom Martin
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>  This mention of 3rd year queens out-producing young queens is an
>interesting observation.
>  Do you have any ideas as to why this is?
I have no idea, but will consult a friend with whom I co-operate in
beekeeping and teaching a course, who reports the same thing (we are not
talking about a general rule, but that we have some 3rd year queens
which outperform first years). He does as a rule, stimulate his colonies
in the spring and even gives them a new frame of foundation in the
middle of the nest, long before I would. Like most of my hives, he works
to the British National hive, in single boxes, and reports at least one
static apiary with 160lb averages each year plus nuclei made up from
them. He can have 3 major nectar flows in at least one apiary, though
the heather flow merges with the later summer flow.

Generally I have young queens, first year (technically second season),
and the excellent performance came from a line which always performed
well and had evidently some degree of hybridisation and possibly
therefore increased hybrid vigour. Though I do everything I can to
maintain valuable local traits, there is variability. Neither that
colony nor the majority of the others had been fed that year, as it has
not been by practice to feed a production colony except in emergency in
a poor spring. It had gone into the winter with around 90lb of stores,
on account of the large size of frame. This is more than double the norm
for our area, which has mild winters and early springs. The year of the
excellent performance was particularly good, with any colony that built
up rapidly in the spring getting a good spring crop. In this season, the
best colonies had a head start on the others, with around and in some
cases, in excess of 50lb before the end of spring in the supers, also
high fro the area. I think now, that with the earlier springs we are
getting, that a rapid spring build up makes all the difference to the
honey crop. The colony I mentioned may have been marginally faster off
the mark and with the deep frames, had that many more foraging bees in
spring than its deep frame neighbours and certainly many more than its
standard frame rivals in other apiaries.

In other words it is not the norm, but noticeable when it happens.
Nowadays, I will stimulate a selection of colonies in early spring (as
soon as the temperature rises again - we seem to have returned to winter
here, with non-flying temperatures of 4-6C or so, having had a period
with 12C+ in the middle of the day), starting with the over-wintered old
and new queen nucs.

I am replacing queens annually where the mite count is higher anyway, so
I replace more queens than hitherto and my average queen age will go
down. I am rearing from those with the lowest mite counts and other good
traits. I see no reason to replace a good performing queen that hasn't
made swarming preparations, in the hope that she will eventually
supersede, or at least get to 3 years before the colony sets up
swarming! BTW, I have had years when virtually all my first season
queens (one year old) made swarming preparations! But it may just have
been the steadily earlier spring build up that stimulated this situation
and a resulting laying space problem. My practice being to replace 1/3
of frames each year with foundation, allows me to put frames of
foundation in the centre of the nest each week for 3-4 weeks. Usually
this keeps the space fine and I have never seen a 14" sq framed hive run
out of space to lay with this regime, though it may have been a close
thing at times. The boxes for 14" sq  frames are too large to run to a
second brood chamber and the queen rarely lays over the top in a super
(if I remove the queen excluder) unless I don't have a honey barrier!
However, increasingly, where I have the standard size brood chamber (8
1/2" deep frames x 14" wide) I am adding a second box which gives me
further options for a while.
--
James Kilty

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