Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum

BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => REQUEENING & RAISING NEW QUEENS => Topic started by: Mici on May 10, 2007, 09:22:34 am

Title: raising an extra queen
Post by: Mici on May 10, 2007, 09:22:34 am
sounds just to easy to be true, huh?
well, my first project (mating nucs, raising up to 4 extra queens) obviusly went down the drain. so...i don't know is it luck or something, but like i mentioned it a few times before, 3 of my hives are being superceded, so i want to take advantage of it.
i screwed up one of the supercedures, and the bees don't seem to want to superced her again, so...the other hive has..3 queen cells, could i use one of the to requeen the other hive.
so, what i did is, i move a frame with one of the queen cell into the super and put double queen excludors inbetween, so the lower queens can't get into contact with the upper one, basicly i made a double queen hive. now..will the bees
-superced the lower queen while having another queen in the super?
can it be just that easy? i was intending to move the "super" queen in the other hive later. will it work?
oh, i put double excludor so there's a space between them, so they really can't get into contact.

by the way, the hive i wanted to requeen and raise few more queens, well today was a marvelous day to work with bees and i found the new queen and the first few thousand eggs :-D HURA!
Title: Re: raising an extra queen
Post by: doak on May 10, 2007, 07:33:48 pm
If you have the equipment and time I'd forget the supercedre cells. For what ever reason she was being supereceded may come back. If you have more than one colony.
This is what I plan to do. Pick out the best colony and move it over about 10 ft. Take about two frames with eggs and brood. One capped almost all and one not fully capped, this is the one the eggs should be on.
Put these two frames in the middle and a frame of honey/pollen on each side. finish out with foundation. In the parent hive that you moved and took these frames from put framed foundation in there place.
Leave the queen in the hive you moved.
Close both up and during the next 10 days make up some mating nucs. Between 10 and 14 days you should have plenty of capped queen cells. Take out what you need and put between two frames of the nuc.
One cell per nuc. You should get a 75%+ out come on the cells. The nucs need not be more than 4 or 5 frames, they don't have to build the queen cell. Only a place for the queen to mate.
 Once she has mated and you know she is laying fertile eggs you can cage her or put the whole works in a big box, 8 or 10 frem, what ever your using, and use the newspaper method to put her on the hive you want to requeen, "or" good way to make increases.
Thats my story and I'm sticking to it.
doak
Title: Re: raising an extra queen
Post by: Mici on May 10, 2007, 07:39:25 pm
well this is the story which went bad for me, my fault :'(
anyway, that "extra" queens purpose is...one hive has sort of..poor queen, and the hive that is being superceeded is absolutely briliant! so it should be called, "raising a queen by the way" :-D
Title: Re: raising an extra queen
Post by: doak on May 10, 2007, 08:36:53 pm
What do they call it? Eating crow. Well here goes, In your case I don't see anything wrong with taking one or two cells from the superceding colony and putting them in the other colony. Just make sure there is not another queen or any cells in it. Why two cells, the bees can tell which is the best and will tare the other cell up and kill that queen, or if both are equal, the workers will let the first one hatched take care of it.
Most times the first one will go around finding other queen cells and destroy them.
doak
Title: Re: raising an extra queen
Post by: Mici on May 11, 2007, 09:06:47 am
ok...wanted to make a nuc out of one queen cell, opened the hive...and found one queen cell destroyed..so ok, i thought one hatched and destroyed the other, no biggie, i'll be without an extra queen. but then, as i proceded i found an egg inside a queen cell :shock: i mean..what tha hell? what you think, probably supercedure gone bad or something? they're still working hard building new comb, so obviusly they aren't so keen about swarming.
Title: Re: raising an extra queen
Post by: doak on May 12, 2007, 11:53:52 pm
If you have a good strong hive, split it. Make sure the one that has not got a queen doesn't have any swarm/supercedre cells. only eggs and brood. It would be best to move the one with the queen and leave the new one in the old spot. Have at least two frames with bees and brood, one of whitch is mostly capped, the other eggs and young larve. They should make several queen cells.
doak
Title: Re: raising an extra queen
Post by: Mici on May 13, 2007, 04:31:35 am
today i'm most probably gonna make that split. depends on what i'll find. i hope the queen in the upper super still lives, which gets me to thinking..moving her now would be probably the worst solution-she may have had an orientation flight, si she'll be able to get back from mating so..beh, i'm not gonna do it.

Edit:
well, checked them earlyer and i was wrong, the other queen hasn't hatched so...i'm gonna do a split, but not like you suggested, because this is my best hive and i don't want to weaken it, so i'll take the frame with the queen cell and another brood frame, it has lots of brood in all stages and add 2 frames of food, basicly i wanna rear this queen to requeen another hive which is doing real BAD, tooooo much chalk brood.

BTW, found another queen cell in the other hive, so...80% of my hives are superceded, the 20% was requeend by me :-D
Title: Re: raising an extra queen
Post by: Mici on May 22, 2007, 08:23:18 pm
ok....somehow i've managed to get 2 spare queens, although not as succesfully as i hoped, basicly i took out the two that were being superceded, i spoted one virgin queen yesterday and the other hive seems to be doing just aswell, i hope i get to see some brood any time this week. the two old queens are still actually my two best queens, don't know why they got superceded.

anway, what i wanted to say is...no, the queen is not the source of chalk brood, or..i just got myself another chalk brood queen, the queen i reared has laid a lot of brood and now i'm seeing the first chalk brood on the entrance...
so, new approach, someone once said it's the comb...i'll cull out 5 frames-it was a weak hive so most of winter stores are still in, and place 5 new..although i don't know if this will help, someone said a shakedown safed his hive from chalk brood, i doubt this step by step thing will work...ah well...