JasonK 59 Posted November 12, 2017 Author Share Posted November 12, 2017 On 11/11/2017 at 11:33 AM, john berry said: If you want natural selection then get some African bees. They will fight off every disease that beekeepers know about, unfortunately they will also fight of the beekeeper.Daley is absolutely right about how to select a breeder and why it is not a good idea to have more than one cell in a hive. I have seen many drone layers with brown freckles on their abdomens which are caused by stings. These queens won the fight but lost the war. Cell size doesn't seem to make much difference to the quality of the Queen as long as they are not tiny. If I have any doubt I open the smallest ones to see if they have any uneaten jelly. If there's leftover jelly then they had all they can eat. That’s interesting, I’ve not been a beek for long but somehow I think I assumed the bigger the better when it comes to queens. I guess it’s all about how well mated they are etc. You think it’s worth investing in a decent AI queen to use as breeding stock? Link to post Share on other sites
Rob Stockley 3,417 Posted November 12, 2017 Share Posted November 12, 2017 6 minutes ago, JasonK said: That’s cool, can you elaborate a little bit on your mini nucs and what they contain / how / when you run them? Thanks, great info Try https://www.nzbees.net/forums/topic/7898-8x-queen-tower-frames/?tab=comments#comment-122067 And https://www.nzbees.net/forums/topic/9971-cloake-board-q8-progress/?tab=comments#comment-152510 Link to post Share on other sites
Phil46 609 Posted August 1, 2018 Share Posted August 1, 2018 @JasonK so how did you get on with your queen " producing & mating"? Did you have much luck? Link to post Share on other sites
JasonK 59 Posted August 1, 2018 Author Share Posted August 1, 2018 (edited) @Phil46 overall, it went reasonably well for my first year of beekeeping. The specially made mating hive with 3x3 frames (& 3 entrances) produced me a couple rounds of queens - although my first attempt failed because I foolishly placed the hive in the middle of a war-zone, and it got robbed out. Grafting went well - 12 from 20 accepted and all but one or two mated. I had good success with poormans splits also - chucking a few frames into a each corflute nucbox. Arguably the poormans splits produced some of my more hardy and prolific laying queens, albeit a bit mongrel looking. I sold numerous mated queens and covered my costs for any mating / rearing equipment. Next season I’ll be experimenting with insanely strong hopelessly-queenless starter, and then distributing the accepted cells among numerous queen right finishers, above queen excluders. I’ll aim to have the plastic cup still visibly FULL of SPARE royal jelly up until the point in which they’re ready to emerge. I’ll likely try my multi-compartment hives for half of the mating, and corflute for the rest. I’ll try to have a constant roll-over of mated queens being produced. Edited August 1, 2018 by JasonK Typo 2 Link to post Share on other sites
Phil46 609 Posted August 1, 2018 Share Posted August 1, 2018 Sounds good mate...most of my splits last year were poor man splits and they have come through the season well.Im looking to have a go at raising queens for my own splits this season just to speed the process up a bit. Am doing lots of reading,watching vids and gear preparation for this next step in beeking. 4 Link to post Share on other sites
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