Beekeeping on Mars

[busybeephilip]

I used to do a lot of queen banking of mated queens, its a usefull teqchnique but you need to be aware of feeding problems and use the correct size of wire mesh

[busybeephilip]

Been thinking more - I suppose you could do 1000 queens using 2 + rounds of 500 apideas. But you would need at least around 50 supporting colonies. And a lot of time but honey would be a nuisance.

[The Drone Ranger]

hi Little_John

Thanks for the info I don't think queen banking is looking too promising
Oher than overwintering though theres no supply of early season queens
That drives imports I think
Wonder how that can be fixed ?
Brother Adam (yes him again) was interested in the longevity of the bees he produced
That was in relation to workers and the advantage is better honey crops
I wonder if he did any measurements of queen age/productivity
Chickens (yes them again) like the commercial varieties for battery production have a relatively short laying life though they are very productive on the other hand Black Rocks designed for outdoor free range /backyard production lay nearly as many eggs but are still laying at 5 years or so old
As far as I am aware Black Rocks are unavailable on Mars ( getting back on topic )

[Jon]

Been thinking more - I suppose you could do 1000 queens using 2 + rounds of 500 apideas. But you would need at least around 50 supporting colonies. And a lot of time but honey would be a nuisance.

1000 solo would definitely be pushing it but 500 is probably attainable if you got yourself well organised.
200 Apideas could produce 500 queens in a decent season, ie starting early, ending late.
Hell of a lot of work though.
Would be dawn to dusk work in June and July.

Curiously, now into October, I am still getting messages from people looking queens.
There is definitely a considerable market, but the UK based supply is not there to meet the demand.

[Pete L]

Curiously, now into October, I am still getting messages from people looking queens.
There is definitely a considerable market, but the UK based supply is not there to meet the demand.

We sent the last nine queens of the season out just over a week ago, had five more requests for queens since sending those out, but reply was sold out, all the rest are in their over wintering boxes now. MAQS seem to of been responsible for quite a lot of extra late queen sales.

[fatshark]

Oher than overwintering though theres no supply of early season queens
That drives imports I think
Wonder how that can be fixed ?

I would think that a good place to start would be to encourage early autumn requeening. Young queens probably overwinter better and get started earlier. Early queens are usually needed by those who have had queen failures overwinter - drone layers, deaths etc. I suspect a good proportion of these could be avoided by going into the winter with a strong, healthy colony headed by a young queen.

How many supercedure queens fail overwinter? (excluding the ones when the bees clearly don't know what's best because they tried to get a virgin mated in mid-October).

If autumn requeening became 'the norm' it would fit in very well with our climate/ability to get queens mated.

PS ... and a follow-up to the post from Pete L. ... Varroa treatments that don't slaughter the queen would be helpful in reducing demand as well Is there anything consistent here in MAQS-induced queen losses? Is it always being correctly applied?

[Jon]

MAQS seem to of been responsible for quite a lot of extra late queen sales.

Same here Pete. A lot of the enquiries start with a rant about queen losses after MAQS.
I still have about 15 in Apideas but I want to hang on to most of those to replace any drone layers I find in the Spring.

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi Fatshark.
I think you are right about end of Summer requeening.
I dont know about commercial beekeeping and they are the main importers of queens.
I'm seeing drones flying about today because of the nice weather.
Unusual this time of year ?
(remember mars)

[Adam]

I see no reason why beekeepers shouldn't produce their own queens - and if (as I hope) imports were banned, there would be a value to the craft. With regard to imports from NZ, I spoke to one local beekeeper 2 or 3 years ago who obtained 4 and only had one left after a couple of months - it's a long way for them to travel.

I didn't expect to have any spare queens this year, however I sold a couple of my surplus queens only a short while ago to a desperate beekeeper (MAQS did for 2 of his 5 queens), and as the weather has been so good, I've made nucs up so 4 of my spares are overwintering in those - definitely a good way of banking queens! Another queen is in a triple swi-bine mini-nuc held together with gaffa tape...

Without imports, beekeepers would have to accept the seasonal nature of queen supply. Our craft is govourned by the weather so much in any case it would not be too difficult to come to terms with.

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi Adam.
I agree with what you say
the imported queens are by all accounts very cheap and produced on a very large scale.
They have a reputation of being very docile as well.
I'm not sure they would be as cheap as producing their own but it seems the big beekeeping operations don't think it is.
All my hives have green marked queens bar a couple of red and one old girl (white) who has been kept deliberately