Has anyone ever given thought to selling unmated queens or would ther be a market for them.
Has anyone ever given thought to selling unmated queens or would ther be a market for them.
LASI sell them ... for £20.
No comment.
Presumably there's a market.
I've given them or sealed cells away ...
Well, you can sell anything! There is always a buyer for any kind of tat, or useless beekeeping equipment. But, perhaps the question could be out another way. Why would you buy an unmated Q ? And would any reason you can come up with really justify the risk of such a purchase?
Has anyone studied acceptance rates of mated v unmated Qs?
Virgin queens are fairly freely traded. Going rate about a fiver, available from several sources, mainly in Europe but in the UK too. Compare to buying mated laying queens the success rate is poor, sometimes very poor.
I know one guy who bought 300 virgins from Batsis in Greece. The outcome was not great.
To directly answer FD..........Not formal studies I know of, but with mated queens you typically get 85 to 95% acceptance, the cases I know of, which will only be at best 15 people purchasing, most said a success rate with virgins varying from 10% up to about 60%. One guy said they were all a success and this was a significant number too (very very dubious of that). However, freshly hatched virgins less than say 12 hours old, have a far better acceptance than shipped ones that may have been in cages with workers for several days. My father did it once in the 1970's with virgins from a breeder in Wales but only got about 35% that worked, so a huge cash loss in wasted splits and the consequent lack of a crop from two thirds of them.
Last edited by Calluna4u; 13-01-2017 at 02:43 PM.
I bought five virgin LASI queens and ended up with six nucleus colonies with laying queens.
I caught a small swarm near the colonies, and when I checked the colonies, found one of them with an open queen cell - so, of those two colonies I'm not sure which queen is the LASI one - but at least they all survived.
I suppose my purchase was rather expensive compared to a fiver a virgin as C4U said - but I didn't know about those, and I'm happy with these queens. I understand that their success in my apiaries also depends on the drones they met - but I think they've got a good start as far as genes are concerned and, if all goes well next season, will increase the gene pool among my bees. Will see.
Kitta
Mated queen introduction success should be well over 90% if you do it properly and follow instructions.
Biggest problem is usually a virgin already present which many beekeepers just wont acknowledge and they introduce an expensive queen to certain doom.
I introduce virgin queens hatched in the incubator to apideas with near 100% success rate.
The queen goes in first and gets a scoop of wet bees on top of her. The apidea is left closed for at least 24 hours after that.
Mating success then depends upon the weather more than any other factor, but you would expect maybe 70-80% to start laying properly under favourable conditions.
Don't know how Lasi manage to sell many at £20 a pop. I would value a virgin queen at a lot less than that.
So - I can see this might apply for AI, or if someone has access to an isolated mating station but for most people these conditions don't apply. If you buy in an unmated Q or even a Q cell, and get her mated (maybe with your own drones) then you must be relatively satisfied with the drone half of the equation and I assume their mothers.
Or you buy in an unmated Q and let her fly in your locality then its up to chance what you get after she mates so little control over genetics. Just seems a bit of wishful thinking and there are always people out there who will take advantage.
Yes, and one short term fix is to buy a mated queen and requeen all your stock with her daughters. The drones the daughter queens produce will be of the same race/genetics as the initial queen you bought as they are haploid and their genetics is independent of whatever the daughters mated with.
If the queen you buy has mated with a dozen or more drones you should be getting a reasonable amount of variation in the stock.
You then graft from an unrelated queen in the expectation that she will mate with the drones from these colonies you have set up. Never guaranteed 100% though as drones can fly in from elsewhere.
Bookmarks