queen breeding

[gmcharlie]

I know the queen goes out and breeds inatial with a bunch of drones,  but does she ever do that again?  IE the following year or???   The reason I wonder is I have 2 queens that were laying  slowly and spotty,  I was told the were probably poorly mated,  will the remate this spring or???

[BjornBee]

I know the queen goes out and breeds inatial with a bunch of drones,  but does she ever do that again?  IE the following year or???   The reason I wonder is I have 2 queens that were laying  slowly and spotty,  I was told the were probably poorly mated,  will the remate this spring or???

No. They will not mate again. Replace her.

A scattered pattern can be for multiple reasons.

1)High mite counts and bees removing larvae.

2)Inbreeding.

The difference between #1 and #2, will depend upon the age of the egg/larvae when being removed.

3)Disease

4)Genetics of the queen.

A queen being "poorly mated" is real, but many times is not true from what is being suggested. A queen needs to mate once in her lifetime to get all the sperm she needs. She mates multiple time to achieve genetic diversity.
So when someone says "poorly mated" queen, she was not really poorly mated. She is either a bad queen, not capable of rapid egg laying, etc., or there is something wrong with her. But there is little that could be attributed to poorly mating  (a couple drones) and being well mated (with 12 or 14 drones.) That unto itself will not effect egg laying.

[gmcharlie]

Okay so its not poorly mated,  and I have had no problems with mites or removed larve.  actually the queens in question didn't do too badly  One was started in may and one in june,  and both filled 2 deeps with honey.  My comparision was 2 other queens right next to them started at the same time,  both those hives produced surplus (around 10 pounds each)  as well as right at 80 pounds that I left in for the winter.      My regular supplier suggest I replace all my queens every year.  I am real hesitant to replace the 2 that did great,  and not real excited to replace the other two either.  I was wondering if they may get better the second year?  according to miller they do.....    Maybe my problem is expectations.....

[Brian D. Bray]

I don't replace my queens every year unless there is something obviously wrong with her.  In my experience, The most productive year for a queen is her 2nd year.  Why replace a queen capable of high production?  I will usually split the hive out in an artificial swarm so that the 2nd year queen goes to the new hive and then let the hive replace the queen.  Sometimes I'll take brood frame from another hive and destroy any queen cells not on that selected frame.  But except for a very aggressive hive such tactics aren't necessary.
In my yard I try to keep OWC, Russians, and Italians.  That gives me sufficient genetic diversity for some time, then there's the bee yard 1/2 mile down the road and another one 1.25 miles away so there is genetic deversity there.  Between the three yards we provide each other with a very good selection for deversity.