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Author Topic: Queens from Supercedure vs Swarm cells vs EMergency Queens  (Read 3146 times)

Offline Barry

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Hello again,
                                I totally understand about swarm cell queens being raised under near perfect conditions, I also understand that supersedure queens are raised similarly under somewhat less then ideal conditions ( a failing queen ), and emergency queens are possibly the worst of all scenario's perhaps fed less well then the rest mentioned. Question  what would you want to raise colonies from queens that tend to be smarmy. this is actually counter productive--would seem to break up your worker force at a time when needed most.
                               To establish a nuc from a super strong colony taking one frame of eggs, another frame capped brood, and 2 frames of honey/ pollen and feed them up.they should generate a virgin queen within 3 weeks  using the drone pool available from parent colony used for the nuc to properly fertilize queen, seems better option for quality queens.
                               While I understand that many use swarms to have colony increases, seems that if infact your bees swarm you actually experience a net loss because your mother hive has had her work force split in half or more, the new hive will not come up to par for about a month or longer, and the net honey loss( drawing comb, brood rearing, replacement workers in parent colony for workers lost to swarm  I don't know   please tell me if I am wrong in my thinking. Seems better to add supers for space add another brood chamber for queen to lay eggs in, warm up the extractor  for the upcoming honey flow
Barry   

Offline Michael Bush

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Re: Queens from Supercedure vs Swarm cells vs EMergency Queens
« Reply #1 on: May 25, 2009, 12:15:10 am »
>Question  what would you want to raise colonies from queens that tend to be smarmy.

All bees swarm.  It's how they reproduce.  Just because they raise swarm cells does not mean they are "swarmy".  "Swarmy" to me means they swarm at the drop of a hat and they repeatedly swarm with after swarms.  No, I wouldn't want to breed from one of those.  But I don't often see those.  Most swarm cells I find are from normal hives doing their normal reproduction.

But you don't let them swarm.  You do splits with the swarm cells and each one raises a queen.  I make a two frame nuc out of each frame that has cells with a frame of honey.
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