Mean green queen saga continues

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Obee1 said:
Hi beeno. They should not get back to real meanies because I squished meangreen. They then had petes queen running round for two weeks laying eggs before she died. The new queen cells are from petes queen. ( come on beeno you need to keep up here!):icon_204-2:
I know some Beeks think that the daughters of petes queen can be iffy. We will see.
Click to expand...

Hi again,
The first thing bees do when you take a queen away is to make emergency cells in my experience. If they made an emergency cell from three day old larva then 6 days have already passed from 15 June + 10 days to emergence (3 days till capped and 7 days to emerge) takes you up to 25 June. Even if a hive is queenless they prefer to make a new queen from their own genes that's why you make them hopelessly queenless i.e. no way back from their own genes, larvae or eggs. Explains why they would kill her at that stage! Sorry...
 
B+. said:
Many years ago, I had Buckfasts from Brother Adam and Peter Donnovan. At the time I was impressed and sought to breed from them. It didn't work. Even the first generation was vicious. I put it down to the influence of the drones
Click to expand...

There may possibly have been some improvements from that time by the current breeders. Currently all my Buckfast F1's have been as good tempered as their daughters (we are talking dozens, which I know is small numbers for a full assessment as per a bee breeder). Most are as fecund, a couple have been even more fecund! Starting material is Island mated Buckfast queen ....damn expensive creatures but worth every euro.
I've had one bad F2 which was no worse than my average locals and miles better than some of the worst. Many of the F2's (about another half dozen or so) have been fine although perhaps not as fecund. I have a couple fo F3's which are basically mongrels but they still retain enough of the good characteristics of Buckfast to keep them. Not done F4's.
You are right in that it may be drone related. I'm fairly isolated and use several open mated Buckfast from other sources in production colonies, this may have swayed or delayed the aggression a bit with a lot of the mating's being to other Buckfast drones.
I'd be interested in hearing others experience and what their starting material was, i.e open mated or isolated queens.
 
Thymallus said:
Starting material is Island mated Buckfast queen ....damn expensive creatures but worth every euro.
Click to expand...

I also had Buckfasts from Freidrichskoog (which is a peninsula). Only one was anything special and this one was really impressive. The others were average at best
I think you get what you pay for with island mated and instrumentally inseminated queens. Land-based mating stations often suffer from too much incursion from other apiaries.
 
B+. said:
I also had Buckfasts from Freidrichskoog (which is a peninsula). Only one was anything special and this one was really impressive. The others were average at best
I think you get what you pay for with island mated and instrumentally inseminated queens. Land-based mating stations often suffer from too much incursion from other apiaries.
Click to expand...

It may be a difference in what we each mean by special. Any Buckfast I've had has been miles above the locals in my area. But this may only correspond to meaning moderate by your standards and experience. It's not a criticism just a thought on how we describe bees with the same words but each can means something totally different.
Put it this way, if you rate your Carniolans above the Buckfast you've had then put me down for a couple next year....spent too much on queens for any more this year!
 
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beeno said:
Hi again,
The first thing bees do when you take a queen away is to make emergency cells in my experience. If they made an emergency cell from three day old larva then 6 days have already passed from 15 June + 10 days to emergence (3 days till capped and 7 days to emerge) takes you up to 25 June. Even if a hive is queenless they prefer to make a new queen from their own genes that's why you make them hopelessly queenless i.e. no way back from their own genes, larvae or eggs. Explains why they would kill her at that stage! Sorry...
Click to expand...
Thanks beeno
My head is spinning with all this. Time for an inquest methinks. Wish I'd had CCTV in there!
I agree the dates make it possible a virgin was in there raised after the newspaper join day when they definitely had MGQ eggs/larvae available.
But if so what happened to her? From 29 June when petes queen was found dying on the floor, the hive was not touched till the 4 July when it was split apart into many pieces and moved to a new site.
If a virgin was in the hive before the 4 July move no eQC would have been built in that period. So say she is then lost on move day... They will now start eQC. The only thing available is what petes queen laid up to 29 June which by this time will be 6 days old and would be the last eggs laid. I do remember finding very few eggs when I inspected on the day petes queen died yet the EQC's are liberally sprinkled all over many frames - unlike the eggs I saw. The eQC seen yesterday now have brown tips. None look opened and resealed, none were torn down.
Bee inspector thinks the eQC were raised soon after petes queen death on 29 not from 4 July moving day. She thinks that a queen stung by a virgin would die quickly - mine took a few hours to die. She was bent in an L shape and her legs looked like they were trying to swim. I kept her in the house lest she recover!
So come on guys. What do you think happened.

Obee
 
Thymallus said:
It may be a difference in what we each mean by special. Any Buckfast I've had has been miles above the locals in my area. But this may only correspond to meaning moderate by your standards and experience. It's not a criticism just a thought on how we describe bees with the same words but each can means something totally different.
Click to expand...

I take your meaning: a lot of measurements can be subjective and this is exactly what I want to talk to my breeding supervisor about when he comes across to the UK on the 21st.
pm me and we can compare figures ;-)
 
Obee1 said:
Thanks beeno
My head is spinning with all this. Time for an inquest methinks. Wish I'd had CCTV in there!
I agree the dates make it possible a virgin was in there raised after the newspaper join day when they definitely had MGQ eggs/larvae available.
But if so what happened to her? From 29 June when petes queen was found dying on the floor, the hive was not touched till the 4 July when it was split apart into many pieces and moved to a new site.
If a virgin was in the hive before the 4 July move no eQC would have been built in that period. So say she is then lost on move day... They will now start eQC. The only thing available is what petes queen laid up to 29 June which by this time will be 6 days old and would be the last eggs laid. I do remember finding very few eggs when I inspected on the day petes queen died yet the EQC's are liberally sprinkled all over many frames - unlike the eggs I saw. The eQC seen yesterday now have brown tips. None look opened and resealed, none were torn down.
Bee inspector thinks the eQC were raised soon after petes queen death on 29 not from 4 July moving day. She thinks that a queen stung by a virgin would die quickly - mine took a few hours to die. She was bent in an L shape and her legs looked like they were trying to swim. I kept her in the house lest she recover!
So come on guys. What do you think happened.

Obee
Click to expand...

You are going to drive yourself nuts on this merry go round, your better off just forgetting about it.

Given the circumstances you will never get to the bottom of it properly, but there are only a couple of options.

1. Your queen died / got injured somehow (really do your head in, it might of been you inspecting).

2. A virgin emerged and took your queen out, but your queen might of also fatally injured the virgin.

Its unusual for a young queen that is going great guns to suddenly pop its clogs without the bees knowing something is up and making plans.

The timings are extremely coincidental if a virgin wasn't around, but s happens.

Bees drive you mad without helping them out.
 
Thymallus said:
Put it this way, if you rate your Carniolans above the Buckfast you've had then put me down for a couple next year....spent too much on queens for any more this year!
Click to expand...

IMHO allowing the area to be flooded with drones from different races is going to make matters worse. Selective breeding from local stock takes patience and many years, even then there can be throw backs. With all the imports into UK since importing began don't we have enough variation to be selective with what we have?
 
Hawklord said:
With all the imports into UK since importing began don't we have enough variation to be selective with what we have?
Click to expand...

Yes we do, if the various sub species/lines already here are maintained by carefully controlled breeding by the beekeepers.
 
Hawklord said:
Do they need to be maintained as separate sub species? If so, why?
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All the various sub species are important, once lost, they are lost forever, do you think that would be a good thing?
 
Hawklord said:
IMHO allowing the area to be flooded with drones from different races is going to make matters worse. Selective breeding from local stock takes patience and many years, even then there can be throw backs. With all the imports into UK since importing began don't we have enough variation to be selective with what we have?
Click to expand...

I think a lot of the original problem (assuming you wanted only native bees) came after
IOW disease. UK had to import bees from abroad to replenish stocks. Hence the mongrelization of any surviving native amms.
The mongrels are not good stock to breed from. And who wants to spend years breeding something equivalent to what's already available
If anything the imports should help improve the locals. They Don,t because too many beekeepers just keep beeswith no idea of what they might be.and hence their mongrel drones flood the area. I mention Buckfast bees to local keepers and get blank incomperehending stares.
 
Hawklord said:
Selective breeding from local stock takes patience and many years, even then there can be throw backs.
Click to expand...

Selectivebreeding means far more than simply allowing the virgins to mate with queens in the area and I see very little evidence of anyone actually controlling the drones a queen mates with or performing the tests to select for desirable traits
 
Hivemaker. said:
All the various sub species are important, once lost, they are lost forever, do you think that would be a good thing?
Click to expand...

I want a bee that has all the good qualities but none of the bad ones. The problem that the small hobbiest beek has is that they breed from their best queen, and because of that genes are lost or narrowed down. I can see it would be easy to get snookered and the hobbiest might get left with a bad bee with difficulty improving that. As a breeder Pete, do you import to inject new genetics into your stock?
 
This year I have raised several queens from each of the 5 colony's I started with, this hopefully will give me some variety and I can start to make selection. I have had no control over drones used to mate my queens, but I will cull any rubbish queens or drones they produce.
 
I suspect most are doing what I'm doing when it comes to any 'breeding'or more accurately simply changing their queen. This takes place with an AS and if you are lucky you can choose to replace your old queen with the new one. In reality I suspect most lose the swarm so don't have a choice with what they are left with.
In July I raise aprox a dozen queens in aidea from my 'best' 2 hives and these mated queens will be used to replace any existing queens which are below par. It doesn't allow me to assess the performance of the apidea queen before she is used but its the best I can do at present.
 
I note a great number of posts about swarming on this forum, so it is presumably very common.
Apart from having good space management and young queens, which I am sure bk's do, is a cause that the bee stock is very swarmy ? Possibly because swarm cells are used for AS and splits ?
Or does the swarming also affect the "well bred" bees as well ?
 
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