How late to mate

[prakel]

This is the oddity of it that I find interesting. I'm inclined to think she probably mated earlier than later....but....am at a loss as to why the delay in starting to lay in your environment. 40ish days from emergence till mating seems an incredible gap if that is what happened.

[mbc]

If she continues laying that would be good. My queens that sat for a month or more before mating this year were not very special. Maybe they can hang on for longer in autumn? Even if she's not much good, I don't suppose there's any chance that she will be superceded until she is in a big colony next year so with luck she'll carry on.
Nevertheless a queen is a queen and worth hanging on to

I have a few queens I'd given up on that had started laying good looking worker brood by the time I'd got round to shaking them out. I've kept the queens and hopefully given them a chance of coming through the winter, but I have my doubts about how well they'll have been mated and will look on with interest to see how they get on in the spring given that they survive.
My question is, considering it is only either my very best colonies with ample everything, or my very worst with rubbish or no queens, who still had drones at the time of these queens mating, could these queens be useful breeding material ?

[Jon]

The theory is that AMM drones fly late in the season and in Marginal weather conditions. This is from Beo Cooper so anecdotal rather than fact.
In that sense the late matings may avoid the yellow drones.
October was very mild and had days when queens could have flown way past the middle of the month.
I checked in this apidea mentioned above yesterday and the queen is still laying and the emerging workers all look dark.
Even if a queen is not the best it could save a colony if you find a drone layer in March.
You could replace it with another queen in June if it is poor.

[The Drone Ranger]

hi mbc.
Just wondering how those late mated queens got on ?

[Jon]

I had 4 apideas come through last winter with late mated queens and I used them to make up nucs.
They seemed to be ok but I remember one or maybe two of them just disappeared over the summer.
I had several queens go awol this summer so I don't think that was anything to do with late mating.
The brood pattern was fine.

[mbc]

hi mbc.
Just wondering how those late mated queens got on ?

Some perished over winter and I lost track of the survivors amidst all the others, so as nothing about them stands out in my mind I presume they did ok. My record keeping isnt what it should be and sometimes its only the oddities that get noticed. I had a small batch of late mated queens again this year, only five out of over a dozen survived mating and my initial round of culling, a lot of effort for only 5 queens at a time of year I dont really need them.

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi mbc you will have to try the queen banking cages then

I've tried lots of hive numbering schemes etc to identify who the parent queen was but they all flopped
Everything is so organised from graft to hatch but after that I would need some coloured disk and number system or something.
It is easiest using a snelgrove because the daughter takes over but as soon as you do splits or move queen cells or grafting it all becomes difficult to keep a record