> ...I have several times removed a queen and, since I read that bees when
> rearing emergency queens will use older larvae, I have gone back in
> after 4 days and removed all capped cells. Then no larvae over 24 hours
> old has a chance. I always find capped cells on the 4th day. This
> suggests that larvae older than 24 hours were used...
Thanks for your observations. Facts help.
As you know, this has been a topic of interest here for quite a while, and it is
of considerable interest and economic importance to many of us and I appreciate
all the opinions, particularly those which challenge me and my assumptions.
Such challenges make me think and in the process, I learn.
With the price of honey down and the cost of queens up, and the reports of
massive losses of purchased queens on introduction, the matter of quality home
raised queens is of huge importance. beekeepers are having to make compromises.
We need to know which compromises are wise and reasonable, and which could be
costly.
Queens raised in the hive have a good chance of acceptance and at a conservative
cost of about $25 per purchased queen (including the cost of the labour and risk
of loss), each such expensive investment must guarantee tangible payback in
terms of better production, better wintering or some other reward. If honey is
the goal, at current prices, each new purchased queen that is successful must
return about 60 to 70 pounds more than an alternative (free) queen to pay us
back. (When you consider that there is a cost (~$0.10 per pound?) to extracting
and barrelling the honey, we can't ascribe the $0.50 market value to honey in
the hive).
As I see it, there are several aspects to the question of breaking down sealed
emergency cells on the fourth day after dequeening.
* The first is exactly *when* the bees cap queen cells, and if all bees cap them
all at the same point, or if there is some variability. I submit there is.
* Another is whether 24 hour old larvae are *that* much better than 36 hour the
larvae that are acceptable by some authors (or the 48 hour larvae that Steve
Tabor suggests the bees choose). I submit that in many cases the difference will
not be detectable in the field.
Joe recently passed on a chart (thank you) that showed that swarm and
supercedure cells (started from eggs) should be best, followed by grafted and
emergency queens (started from 24 hour larvae). These latter two types
apparently decline in quality from the ideal by about 10% by 24 hours, and 15%
to 20%, if a larva is 48 hours old at time it is chosen for queen building. At
least that appeared to be the case in the tests that resulted in the chart.
FWIW, I suspect that the results may have been tidied up a bit. Having done
some lab work myself and having done some field experiments, I know that it is
very seldom that the results are clear cut and that all extraneous influences
can be entirely discounted. Moreover there may be quite a bit of scatter in the
results which does not show in the tabulations which are necessarily averaged.
But I digress...
I recently wrote regarding the chart in 'Contemporary Queen Rearing'. After I
did so, being the doubter that I am, I wondered if I was, perhaps using a typo
to prove my case; the spacing did not seem the same as in the charts to either
side and I wondered if a carriage return/line feed had been missed. If that
were the case, then the 'sealing' should be further down the page a bit, putting
it down the page into the next day -- a bit at least.
At any rate, I pulled out my books -- again -- and took another look.
* Spivak & Reuter (Successful Queen Rearing) say "When the larva is 5-6 days old
(or 4-5 days after grafting) the cell is fully formed and will be sealed by the
worker bees". This was using 24 hour larvae.
* Laidlaw & Page (Queen rearing & Bee Breeding) deal with the development of
queen cells on page 82. There are pictures and things are very clear. The only
question that is left open -- assuming that the pictures are correct and that
they were taken at precisely 24 hour intervals -- is the exact age of the larva
grafted. In that regard, I could only find only one reference accompanying a
picture on page 60, stating that the larvae shown are the correct age for
grafting at "about one day old".
Figure 55 shows "Queen cells three days following grafting". They are not capped
at this point. This would equate to three days after dequeening if the bees
chose 24 hour larvae, as Laidlaw did. The cells look pretty close to ready to
cap.
Figure 56 shows "Cells sealed on the fourth day following grafting". They are
well capped in the picture, although the one on the left does not appear to be,
for some reason. This would equate to the fourth day after dequeening, again if
the bees chose 24 hour larvae, as Laidlaw did. This is when you would be going
to break down the cells...
There are assumptions in the above argument, and they mmust be examined. One is
that the bees raise cells the instant that the queen is gone, but we know that
it takes at least several hours for them to get their act together. I have heard
5 or so is typical. I have seen it take much longer...
The conclusion I reach -- assuming scrupulous attention to timing of the
grafting and photos -- is that if you went back exactly four days after
dequeening, and knocked down all sealed cells, you could well be killing cells
raised from 24 hour larvae. That is not to say that you would not be knocking
down older ones. However, the whole premise to the 'knock the sealed cells at
four days' approach is that bees raise emergency cells from larvae of varying
ages. I wonder. Emergency cells in my recollection are usually in one
particular area of the comb, and thus should encompass larvae of roughly the
same age. If you destroy their cells will they build differently the next time?
Are any that are uncapped on the fourth day from younger larvae, or just started
later?
allen
For those who asked: If I could buy only one queen rearing book, which would I
choose? Today, it would probably be Laidlaw & Page's "Queen rearing & Bee
Breeding". Tomorrow, my answer might be different.
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