Queen Raising... and my photos

[USAnewbee]

Hey can anyone give a few tips on queen raising? Wonder how many of you folks have tried doing this yourself? Otherwise, could you let me know where you get your queens from? What type do you think are best? Just am curious at this point, but would appreciate advice. I was told I have Italian girls when I bought them this spring. Lapp's Bee Supply out of Reeseville, WI. The folks at Lapp's are nice and patient with me...Thanks and hope you can see my photos. I have a new Kodak digital camera (I bought it on www.newegg.com  GREAT place folks, really!), and am learning to use it. Just don't know how to make the photo part of the message yet... boy, do I have alot to learn....

[Anonymous]

Welcome to the site. Your going to like it here I believe. I got my queen this year from the Walter Kelly Company out of Kentucky, I also got a queen from Emeral ridge here in Michigan, that web site is emeraldridge.com
Many of our club members get their queen from Shumans who have adds in bee culture and american bee jornal.
I fixed your above pictures so you could view them, be aware that webshot photos can be tricky. You can see them but others can't manytimes. Photo bucket is the same way. Imagestation by sony seems to work the best here from what I am seeing.
All you needed to do is place the brackets behind the address with no spaces.
Funny thing I was just looking at Laps site as they are the only place where I have found parts to fix frames.
Again Welcome to the site.
 :D Al

[Robo]

Welcome USANewBee.....

Here is my method of Queen Rearing.

This year I got very nice queens from:

Indian Summer Honey Farm - Carniolan
Bee Works - Northern Italians

My personal favorite is Carniolan because of their gentle disposition.

[Robo]

[Lesli]

I've been looking at the Nicot system, too. I defnitely want to raise my own queens, for a number of reasons. If it's true that ferals are returning to my area, then there may well be ferals with mite resistance, so the gene pool would be interesting.

Also, I've twice been in situations this year where having an "extra" queen would have been handy. It turned out all right in both cases, but it taught me that when you only have a few hives (and therefore few options), growing your own isn't a bad idea at all.

Of course, given the miniscule size of my "operation," I could just rear queens by pulling frames from a strong colony and letting them raise their own in nucs. That would save money and trouble. :)

But I have been planning ahead. While I have plenty of land, I figure that 10-20 hives would be my max. I do have friends about 5 miles away, however, who have 130 acres, and they'd be happy to house some hives. I figure that's pretty perfect: not much overlap of foraging (it may be closer as the bee flies...), and being so close, it would be an easy "out yard" for me. And they'd appreciate the honey and pollination for their gardens. So it's a win-win, if I decide to expand big time.

[eivindm]

In Norway there are a couple of places where they organize the fertilizing.  You can bring with you a virgin queen with a nuc with some drones to a place where a lot of others are doing the same.  All the bees have to be of the same race and the breeding place.  This way you can raise your own queens and stiil avoid inbreed due to the large gene pool.  Do anyone do that in the US?

[Lesli]

Great pics, by the way. What a bumper crop of bees!

I don't know of any mating areas outside of lab-type trials. In a country this large, there would have a be a lot of them.