At 09:00 AM 7/13/98 +0200, you wrote:
>I frequently have read that a queen that starts to lay later than 15 days
>after emerging is a bad queen, is that true?.
>I have verified a lot of times that queens which started to lay 30 days
>after emerging were so good or better than 15 day's queens. So, what is true
>and false in this matter?.
 
In commercial queen rearing a good bee breeder will kill queens that do not
lay within a day or two of their normal time and never would ship a queen
that goes 30 days. The reason for this is more time then not caused by poor
mating weather and these queens seldom are fully charged with sperm and are
lay for only a few days, weeks, and then are replaced by the bees. Queens
that go up to 30 days are more times then not "nature" queens that are not
from the queen cells introduced by the breeder.
 
As for being true or false it all depends on what side of the bread is
buttered. If your business is producing quality queens then its true. If
you on the other side have lots of time to watch each hive and there no
other reason to replace the queen and she is doing a good job today then
its OK to keep her and  its false. At one time I even had some free bee
help that would help me replace queens for the queens that I would normally
pinch off.
 
It is also true that there is always some risk that the queen you replace
an old queen with will not be as good as the one you are replacing.
 
ttul, the OLd Drone
http://beenet.com
 
 
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