Unmated queens.

[fatshark]

I don't know how LASI manage to sell anything through the University system for £20 ... presumably there are salaries, overheads etc. sliced off this ... ? Considering the price of high quality mated queens, the introduction success rate and the hit and miss nature both of getting them mated and to something desirable (genes-wise) they look pricey.

Nevertheless, I'm pleased they appear to be working for you Kitta and would be interested to hear how you get on with them. Are there piles of Varroa being turfed out of the entrance?

[Thymallus]

From what I've gleaned they are good at turfing out frozen killed dead brood.....but not tested for specifically removing larva with Varroa . i.e not Varroa Sensitive Hygiene. If I remember correctly LASI suggest they are treated for varroa as well, at least once a year....somewhere in their blurb.
Perhaps someone knows the answer to this but hygienic behaviour and 2 recessive genes (1 for uncapping, 1 for removal) have been well described for AFB resistant bees many moons ago. It's always been unclear (to me at least) what the difference is between these known traits and the LASI bees, except they have just been tested for freeze killed brood.removal with no AFB involvement.

[Mellifera Crofter]

... they look pricey.

Nevertheless, I'm pleased they appear to be working for you Kitta and would be interested to hear how you get on with them. Are there piles of Varroa being turfed out of the entrance?

No! But then, I've hardly seen any varroa in any of my colonies. As Thymallus said, I don't think they're sold as varroa biters.

Pricey ... I don't know - but they come from colonies that's been tested. I'm happy for now. I hope they met some of Jon and Drone Ranger's queens' drones on their mating flights.

Kitta

[mbc]

I sold 40 (actually 42) 10 day old queen cells for £80 a few years ago, apparently almost all hatched ok after travelling a couple of hours in an insulated box but only around 20 useful mated queens resulted. I usually expect slightly better results placing cells in my own nucs but if I'm honest I don't seem to get the returns I read about quoted elsewhere, if I graft 40 cells I usually get 35 plus queen cells that survive the cull, after placing these in nucs almost all normally hatch but when it comes to harvesting well mated queens with good laying patterns and no visible chalk etc the final total tends to be below 30, depending on the weather when they're mating sometimes nearer 20.

[fatshark]

I don't think my figures are much different to that and, when I've taught queen rearing to beginner groups, I usually say that a 50% return overall is to be expected. As my grafting has improved I get more picky over what constitutes a well-mated good queen, so I suspect my overall success rate hasn't changed too much over the last 5 years.

[Greengage]

My previous post does no seem to have popped up but no matter I cannot remember what I posted thanks for the info.I was chatting at a meeting recently and the discussion came up.One chap said he knows someone producing 1200 mated queens (Now I dont know but you have to listen to thunder) at €40 per pop. Anyway I suggested if you could get that many mated how many unmated could he produce. I always knew there was money in this bee keeping just figuring out how to get it out. as I am always investing in bits and pieces of equipment and it just costs money, now I have more tools table saw, drill etc I reckon everything will be ok well that was my excuse for getting more tools.