Authentic carniolan Bee Queens (apis m. carnica) from Slovenia

Hi Jon £20 is fair considering the work involved

You used to be able to buy a nice crossbred queen in Scottish Beekeeper for £10 -- happy days (John Furzey ?)

The queen rearing group is a good idea it is likely to be harder in some areas

One of my friends has 4 hives and she put them a couple of hundred yards away from her house

One day around a dozen hives turned up in a field about 40 yards from her house they belong to a big beekeeping operation working the next door farm.

Nice bees of course but the local drone congregation area will be Carnie dominated over the whole farm there will be loads of hives

She won't be buying any queens but if she did it would be a waste of time buying anything fancy

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The queen rearing group is a good idea it is likely to be harder in some areas

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Hard enough at the moment with about 70 virgin queens in apideas in this weather.
These have probably got until about 25th June before going stale and the forecast is not good.

I gave up through lack of interest this year and just raised queens for myself. I work close to a guy who bought ligustica in last year and this year is bringing both a couple of buckfast and carnica queens in. Add that to the 138 apiaries within 10 miles of me and what am I supposed to do? At least the Italians are crossing nicely with the general population.

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Originally Posted by Nellie

I work close to a guy who bought ligustica in last year and this year is bringing both a couple of buckfast and carnica queens in.

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This is an approach I just can't get my head around. If someone is going to insist on bringing in new stock, so long as it remains legal fair enough, but what advantage do people perceive by introducing so many different strains in such a short time period? Any benefit which could possibly have been derived from the Italian stock is surely going to be lost (if reliant on open matings) before they've even been given chance to prove themselves over a couple of seasons and just as importantly before the keeper has had chance to select the best for further breeding.

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Originally Posted by Jon

Hard enough at the moment with about 70 virgin queens in apideas in this weather.
These have probably got until about 25th June before going stale and the forecast is not good.

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How many days after emerging do you usually have ?

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Originally Posted by prakel

This is an approach I just can't get my head around. If someone is going to insist on bringing in new stock, so long as it remains legal fair enough, but what advantage do people perceive by introducing so many different strains in such a short time period? Any benefit which could possibly have been derived from the Italian stock is surely going to be lost (if reliant on open matings) before they've even been given chance to prove themselves over a couple of seasons and just as importantly before the keeper has had chance to select the best for further breeding.

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Is this a reaction to worries about in breeding.
Buying in queens is an expensive option

If you have 20+ hives its likely a lot of drones in your local areas could be your own
With 2 hives there is no danger of that
So if you have a few hives only you can happily raise queens from your "best" hive without worry
Those queens will mate with local drones
With lots of hives you might be safer not to select from your best one only

In Nellie's case with 138 nearby apiaries a quite narrow selection criteria would be safe enough so although the bees you have will always be hybrid you have a great opportunity to raise gentle bees (easy -ish) and good honey producers (not so easy LOL)

In the countryside where I live there are hundreds of nearby hives during the rape at the start of the season
They disappear later to the heather etc.
The early and late queen rearing conditions would be different ( I stick to one new queen/hive using boards)
So if someone was in my position they might choose to raise queens after the rape when there are less other hives

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Originally Posted by The Drone Ranger

How many days after emerging do you usually have ?

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I reckon about 25. The odd one will mate later but some will start laying drone at this point.

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If you have 20+ hives its likely a lot of drones in your local areas could be your own
With 2 hives there is no danger of that
So if you have a few hives only you can happily raise queens from your "best" hive without worry
Those queens will mate with local drones
With lots of hives you might be safer not to select from your best one only

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All good points. I have 7 or 8 queens I would be happy to graft from.
I have about 18 colonies myself but if you add in local guys from the queen rearing group the number rises considerably.
A lot them have very swarmy mongrels. people were losing swarms from mid april.
I have only had one out of 18 make swarm preparations so far.
I reckon it is a cunning plan as they know I am going to be away for 3 weeks in July this year.

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Originally Posted by The Drone Ranger

Is this a reaction to worries about in breeding.
Buying in queens is an expensive option

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No, not at all. Quite the opposite actually!

While I accept that imports are a part of life and we need to live with them my own approach to this issue is that local populations need to be stabilized as much as possible and that isn't ever going to be achieved if individuals are introducing three different races in two seasons.

A few years back I had first hand experience of people bringing in bees to a semi-isolated area (Portland) where there had been a relatively small but very stable population of bees. In a matter of two years or so the total hive count on the Isle doubled -partly due to new beekeepers buying nucs and colonies from wherever they could find them and partly due to a very experienced beekeeper from several miles away who took it on himself to decide that he was going to use the Isle to breed amm without any discussion with the existing beekeepers. The outcome was that almost every new queen which mated during latter part of '09 through '11 resulted in highly defencive colonies where previously everything I had on the Isle were a pleasure to handle -very important in a location which has many unofficial footpaths and is open to general 'roaming'.

A couple of the early matings (through supercedure) took me off guard in the sense that I wasn't aware of the issue untill early '10 when I found myself with large colonies which couldn't be opened without passers by (at some distance from the apiaries) being stung, in the end I had to move those colonies to a remote country apiary just so that I could sort them out without fear of causing injury to others.

Maybe this isn't the 'norm' but it is a fact. I've also heard of at least one other local keeper who's only hive in the back garden has caused a lot of trouble with the neighbours due to constant attacks.

Thankfully, the local word is that one of the new guys (who'd brought in 11 colonies from somewhere) had very high losses last winter; he actually told the local barber that all of his bees had "swarmed during the winter and left behind empty hives" which says a great deal...

that's bad news for the Portland beekeepers
I see your difficulty is that where there are fewer beekeepers the whole situation can be destabilised very easily

Everyone finds their situations different and that's the reason why general advice might be OK most of the time but not all of the time.

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Originally Posted by Jon

I reckon about 25. The odd one will mate later but some will start laying drone at this point.



All good points. I have 7 or 8 queens I would be happy to graft from.
I have about 18 colonies myself but if you add in local guys from the queen rearing group the number rises considerably.
A lot them have very swarmy mongrels. people were losing swarms from mid april.
I have only had one out of 18 make swarm preparations so far.
I reckon it is a cunning plan as they know I am going to be away for 3 weeks in July this year.

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Hope the weather sorts itself out in time to let mating flights take place.
I didn't have any serious swarm preparations till later this year because of the weather. Mid May LOL!
Those swarmy bees would make good queen cell raisers though so they are useful in their own way.
You need a trusty deputy to guard them hives :)