Welcome, Guest

Author Topic: what are the draw backs!  (Read 3063 times)

Offline TREBOR

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 194
  • Gender: Male
    • The Cynical Bastards
what are the draw backs!
« on: March 24, 2005, 12:25:01 am »
Hi again all,
when doing a side by side split, what are the draw backs of letting the
queenless group rise there own queen?
 I just wonder what everyone thinks
my books not here yet!

Offline Jay

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 471
what are the draw backs!
« Reply #1 on: March 24, 2005, 12:50:26 am »
When your new virgin queen goes out on her nuptual flight, and mates with the drones in your local area, you can not be sure of the genitics that will be passed on to the new hive. Temperment, honey production, hygenic behaivior etc. all up in the air.
By the rude bridge that arched the flood
Their flag to Aprils breeze unfurled
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world
-Emerson

Offline thegolfpsycho

  • Field Bee
  • ***
  • Posts: 583
what are the draw backs!
« Reply #2 on: March 24, 2005, 02:24:34 am »
The new colony is set back several weeks while the new queen is raised and takes her nuptial flights.  If the new split is put on drawn comb, they can probably catch up, but if much foundation is used, it will retard them for quite a while.

Offline TREBOR

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 194
  • Gender: Male
    • The Cynical Bastards
what are the draw backs!
« Reply #3 on: March 24, 2005, 12:17:27 pm »
hey thanks jay,
  nice info
I've been reading quite a bit and found this !
It kinda got me thinkin

 Slow Hives.
    Over the last couple of years I have been involved with a number of hives which failed to grow in size, or to produce a crop, almost 'stagnating' as one customer put it. I had been asked to examine the hive which seemed to be queenright, with a young self made queen, and what appeared to be a full sized brood nest, but it was not putting up honey.

    The first step was an examination of the hive in question. A quick look through the hive didn't show up any problem, lots of brood in the frames, a good number of bees and some honey in the upper frames, but totally empty honey supers. I questioned as to the history of the hive and was told it had swarmed early in the year and that the hive population was growing, but not as fast as was thought necessary. A further examination found an interesting problem. Brood of different ages in the same frame, and further examination showed that most if not all frames had the same problem. At first look, lots of capped brood, but lots of brood of different ages even some eggs in the middle of the capped brood!

    A good queen, well mated, will lay up a complete frame of eggs which then hatch all at the same time, the bees then cap off the whole frame and rarely is it necessary for the queen to go back infilling. It now becomes obvious, if a queen lays up 100% but only 50% are viable then the hive will not increase in size, nor will the hive be efficient in it's use of brood space, leading to the queen constantly going back over the same ground time after time. In this problem hive it was only just self sufficient, certainly not profitable for the keeper. There are some who keep bees, just for the sake of keeping bees, but in all cases honey, surplus honey, even a small amount, has to be the reason for spending so much time looking after them.

   Over the last few years Varroa has changed forever our methods of keeping bees and mating queens, and this is what I think is happening to cause 'slow hives'. Some bee keepers have, for many years, relied on feral hives to help out with Queen mating, those feral hives in trees, barns and outhouses helped to provide a cross section of drones to add mating diversity. With the advent of Varroa all that has changed, no more feral hives! The only bees around are kept bees, medicated by bee keepers to help maintain healthy hives. Suddenly the mating diversity that we relied on to help mate our 'self made' queens has gone, and we are left with the drones provided by our own hives, and here is the crux of the matter. Should you try to mate a queen too close to her own family line, even her own brother, as can easily happen, then diploid eggs are produced. The closer to, and lack of other line diversity leads to more and more diploids being produced, the eggs will fail and are removed by the bees producing holes in the brood pattern. This leads the queen to come back in-filling and this is where the brood of various ages comes from and where the problem becomes apparent.

    There is a way of determining whether your hive is a slow one or not, try adding an empty brood frame to the middle of the brood nest, then note the brood development over a complete cycle. If you find a pattern as described, then you'll need to take some action in the queen rearing and mating area of your operation.

    So what can be done? Firstly it is important to acknowledge the problem. They say, "the first step to getting well is to admit to being sick"! The same applies to keeping bees, the first step is to admit a problem, too many don't even realise or care that they, or rather their bees, have a problem! Analyse the problem and ask some questions. Where did the bees come from? Did they come from the same dealer, could they be all related? If so then it's important to increase the 'line' diversity. What is meant by 'line'? This is the family line. Bees from the same queen are produced from the same family 'line', and will add nothing to the mating diversity, you need bees from different 'mother' queens, even from a different dealer if necessary.

    As a queen breeder we discovered this some time ago and developed different lines of bees, just to ensure that our mating diversity was sufficient to give a good egg laying pattern in our queens that we mate. I have written before that 'self made' queens, or 'walk away splits' rarely produce good quality queens, this is just one area that helps to prove the point.

   My advice. Don't waste time, if you haven't the time nor ability to produce quality queens, then buy from a good breeder, and re-queen your hives with a quality product every two seasons, it is false economy to let nature take it's course with such an important item, your hive will thank you with a better crop.




now this may not apply to everyone but the part where he talks about
not being enough feral bees due to mites and such, there for decreasing
mating diversity, Which mother nature put there for a reason!

 so maybe there's yet another reason that hives will tend to swarm!
FRom what I 've been reading it seems alot of the more mite resistent
breeds are more likely to swarm

with man on the planet mother sometimes has a hard time keeping up
   with all the damage we do. I don't think she intended for us to put her bees on trucks and ship them everywhere, which is most likely the reason for wide spread pests and low emunity and a decrease in feral bees.
 
maybe the bees sense this lose in wild colonies on some level and are trying there damndest to do something about it, we have found and breed
pest resistent bees and when we get them we do our best to keep them from swarming because we worry some much about OUR losses.
 
 Sometimes man gets in the way while he's just trying to lend a hand
 sometimes the hand is needed if but only for a moment !!!!!!!!

If one was in a remote location (AS MANY OF US ARE)
  and had more then a few hives
 it might be of benefit to say let One race of bees go crazy and throw swarms when ever they want to, like say russiuns and keep the others at home , to maybe give some pest resistence back to the feral bees
and improve on mating at home. by increasing local colonies.
 just a thought!

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK GOOD OR BAD..................!

 [/b]