Mating 2015

[The Drone Ranger]

Any sign of bqcv and I was taught to discontinue using that colony for queen raising. Virus issues probably account for many of the problems which crop up without us ever realising there is an underlying problem.
Wally Shaw mentioned an interesting theory in one of his lectures at the bibba do las t year, which was that more queens mated in the second half of the season fail due to drones having a higher virus load later on and the possibility that they may pass something on to queens via an std, I expect the chances of picking up an std are quite high if you exchange fluid with a dozen or so partners at each romp.

I will be testing that theory soon mbc on a small scale compared to you though
Of the 13 new keilers I started recently 11 are still left 2 failed already
So with any luck they can convince the virgin queen to run the gauntlet and get mated
I have plenty drones partly thanks to a small but annoying team of drone layers from the last lot
I'm hoping for more Arnold Swartzeneggers and less Frank Spencers after all the nosh they have been given

[greengumbo]

One of my reared queens was required in an emergency last week so I have a mating nuc with a new cell due to hatch in 6 days....chances of getting mated ? I would say very slim unless the weather improves !

[mbc]

One of my reared queens was required in an emergency last week so I have a mating nuc with a new cell due to hatch in 6 days....chances of getting mated ? I would say very slim unless the weather improves !

Clear blue skies and high temp down here, I'm regretting my crystal ball didn't tell me to initiate another round of grafting some three weeks ago, I did start another lot later, ready to go out Wednesday, but will the weather hold for these to get mated towards the end of august? Anybody selling accurate divination apparatus please pm me.

[Jon]

I have had several dozen queens start to lay in the past week and today is sunny and should reach 22c.
July was bad but August has been grand. I have queens which emerged on 6th August started to lay already.

That is an interesting theory of Wally Shaw's and there could be something in it. The most common virus, DWV, can certainly be passed on by drones like an STD during queen mating. There was some discussion of this a couple of years ago on the forum. Fatshark may have put up a link to a paper on this but I can't remember what it was. possibly one of the S Martin papers.

[Greengage]

Good year for mating here Peter.
I had about a dozen queens mated before the end of May in Apideas and about another 100 in June.
Weather has got more iffy this last week or so but I saw a lot of queens flying from Apideas on Sunday.

Its probably none of my business but what do you do with all those queens ,just curious.

[Jon]

I sell them. There is huge demand for native queens and very few people rearing them in any quantity.

[fatshark]

That is an interesting theory of Wally Shaw's and there could be something in it. The most common virus, DWV, can certainly be passed on by drones like an STD during queen mating. There was some discussion of this a couple of years ago on the forum. Fatshark may have put up a link to a paper on this but I can't remember what it was. possibly one of the S Martin papers.

You could try this for starters ... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18358488
However, I'm pretty sure that all the studies (there are others as well as the one above) are using instrumental insemination, rather than open mated queens. I wouldn't like to design the experiment to test the latter.

There might be a case to use repeated Varroa controls in drone rearing colonies ... I bet vaporisation is sufficiently unintrusive to be applied repeatedly. I've used it and not detected any slow-down in laying by the queen.

[Feckless Drone]

Have you found sometimes an extra long wait heralds a drone layer ?

I thought my Q rearing had gone OK despite far from optimal weather in June, there were no drone layers just a couple of mating nucs where Qs disappeared. So - whilst inspecting and treating for varroa and feeding it was rather disheartening to see three colonies working on supercedure, with one or 2 Q cells right in the middle of the brood.
It seems too late to expect much. Anyone else notice this happening? Wonder if this is the start of my Q-problems due to poor mating this year.

[Jon]

There seem to be a lot of reports about supersedure this year but it is not necessarily a poorly mated queen due to inclement weather.
Some other possibilities were discussed in the STD thread.
Mites, virus, nosema, MAQS and/or other beekeeper miticides could also play a part.

[gavin]

There seem to be a lot of reports about supersedure this year but it is not necessarily a poorly mated queen due to inclement weather.
Some other possibilities were discussed in the STD thread.
Mites, virus, nosema, MAQS and/or other beekeeper miticides could also play a part.

Yes to all that but locally we've had a high percentage of straight queen failures. I've seen around 50% of splits fail in various Tayside apiaries including one just a mile or two to the West of your main site, FD. My main apiary had even more. All of the cases I'm thinking about had 6-10 colonies on site and all the signs of good drone populations. Most of the failures are drone layers which does tend to be associated with early failures of those queens that did mate and get going normally.

This year especially in the later summer I've also noticed lots of queen balling. Is it particularly prevelent this year or is it the nature of the stocks I'm using? Also wondering whether the high queen failure rate amongst those who have freshly obtained bees for the first time is due to queen balling triggered by over-long inspections by those in awe of their new charges. Experienced beekeepers ought to see it happening and quietly withdraw.

Of course, if you see the old queen present then it is proper supersedure.