Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

ocba - Re: [ocba] To requeen or not to requeen

ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: George Morris <juncus215 AT gmail.com>
  • To: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] To requeen or not to requeen
  • Date: Sun, 3 May 2015 21:07:22 -0400

Randal and Brad,
Thanks form the info! I think that it my be prudent if someone has a frame
of eggs and brood that they are wiling to part with, I'd like to put them
into my hives and see the results. The way i see it, and you can correct me
if I'm wrong, is that 1) if there's no queen there will produce a queen from
the egg cells, and 2) if there is a laying queen, then I will have a bit of
extra brood to boost the colony. Either way, I can't go wrong.
All,
Does anyone have 2 frames (one for each hive) with eggs, larva and brood,
that they'd be willing to barter, trade or sell to get me a start? I'd
please let me know and I'll see the best way to get up with you on this!
Again, I'm in the Chapel Hill area.
Thanks so much!
George - 919-818-3984
,
On May 3, 2015, at 7:17 PM, ocba-request AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> Send ocba mailing list submissions to
> ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ocba
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> ocba-request AT lists.ibiblio.org
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> ocba-owner AT lists.ibiblio.org
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of ocba digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re:To requeen or not to requeen (Randall Austin)
> 2. Re: To requeen or not to requeen (Hamsiba Family)
> 3. Re: To requeen or not to requeen (Randall Austin)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 03 May 2015 14:34:15 -0400
> From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
> To: George Morris <juncus215 AT gmail.com>, ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [ocba] To requeen or not to requeen
> Message-ID: <55466A27.6050201 AT gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"; Format="flowed"
>
> George,
>
> It is way too early to expect to see evidence of a queen. The article
> <here <http://www.baileybeesupply.com/docs/i_need_to_buy_a_queen.pdf>>
> discusses the queen development timeline that you can use to find the
> earliest possible date that you may see eggs. The earliest you can
> usually expect to see eggs after swarming is a little less than 3 weeks,
> but this depends on a host of factors. As a practical matter, brood at
> least 3 or so days old are a lot more obvious to see than eggs, so add
> another 6 days to the whole deal before it is clear that there is a queen.
>
> If you introduce a store-bought queen during the swarming
> queen-replacement process, the workers will most assuredly kill the
> high-dollar queen. So your situation (which is shared by all of us at
> some point) calls for patience. From your description, everything should
> be progressing as it should; wait it out and check again in a few weeks.
>
> Randall
>
> On 5/2/2015 6:36 PM, George Morris wrote:
>> Help/ advice!!!
>> We have 2 hive that both swarmed this spring, and unfortunately we did not
>> catch the swarms. But after we inspected the hives, we initially saw a
>> queen in both hives. Swarming happened over a week ago on both hives and
>> we went into them today to look for the queens and or fresh eggs. We saw
>> neither. The question is, are we early for seeing eggs laid by a new
>> queen, even if we didn't see the queen, or should we be seeing signs of
>> eggs at this stage. Should we requeen, with purchased queens or give it
>> some more time?
>>
>> Any advice is good advice, and if someone has some time to come over and
>> take a look, that would also be appriciated. Our hives are located on the
>> west side of Chapel Hill.
>>
>> George
>> _________________________________________
>> ocba mailing list | North Carolina Beekeeping| http://www.theocba.org/
>> Manage Your Subscription: http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ocba/
>>
>
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL:
> <https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/ocba/attachments/20150503/67d48daa/attachment-0001.html>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 3 May 2015 16:37:40 -0400
> From: Hamsiba Family <hamsibas AT gmail.com>
> Cc: Orange County Beekeepers Association <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> Subject: Re: [ocba] To requeen or not to requeen
> Message-ID:
> <CA+x3aG64dHJreeiUCKkH9mj9nPqzeT1aUut0xKMNqM-UvfDj-g AT mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Randall,
>
> I have seen lots of info on timing of queens. Is there a rule of thumb on
> when the threat of laying workers really starts to get likely?
>
> It seems that it must be more than a few weeks as we are often told to wait
> a few weeks to see what is happening.
>
> Just trying to up my mentoring game.
>
> Thanks, Brad
> On May 3, 2015 2:35 PM, "Randall Austin" <ra41717 AT gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> George,
>>
>> It is way too early to expect to see evidence of a queen. The article <
>> here <http://www.baileybeesupply.com/docs/i_need_to_buy_a_queen.pdf>>
>> discusses the queen development timeline that you can use to find the
>> earliest possible date that you may see eggs. The earliest you can usually
>> expect to see eggs after swarming is a little less than 3 weeks, but this
>> depends on a host of factors. As a practical matter, brood at least 3 or so
>> days old are a lot more obvious to see than eggs, so add another 6 days to
>> the whole deal before it is clear that there is a queen.
>>
>> If you introduce a store-bought queen during the swarming
>> queen-replacement process, the workers will most assuredly kill the
>> high-dollar queen. So your situation (which is shared by all of us at some
>> point) calls for patience. From your description, everything should be
>> progressing as it should; wait it out and check again in a few weeks.
>>
>> Randall
>>
>> On 5/2/2015 6:36 PM, George Morris wrote:
>>
>> Help/ advice!!!
>> We have 2 hive that both swarmed this spring, and unfortunately we did not
>> catch the swarms. But after we inspected the hives, we initially saw a
>> queen in both hives. Swarming happened over a week ago on both hives and
>> we went into them today to look for the queens and or fresh eggs. We saw
>> neither. The question is, are we early for seeing eggs laid by a new
>> queen, even if we didn't see the queen, or should we be seeing signs of
>> eggs at this stage. Should we requeen, with purchased queens or give it
>> some more time?
>>
>> Any advice is good advice, and if someone has some time to come over and
>> take a look, that would also be appriciated. Our hives are located on the
>> west side of Chapel Hill.
>>
>> George
>> _________________________________________
>> ocba mailing list | North Carolina Beekeeping| http://www.theocba.org/
>> Manage Your Subscription: http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ocba/
>>
>>
>>
>> _________________________________________
>> ocba mailing list | North Carolina Beekeeping| http://www.theocba.org/
>> Manage Your Subscription: http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ocba/
>>
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL:
> <https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/ocba/attachments/20150503/33cb464e/attachment-0001.html>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sun, 03 May 2015 19:17:44 -0400
> From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
> To: Hamsiba Family <hamsibas AT gmail.com>
> Cc: Orange County Beekeepers Association <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> Subject: Re: [ocba] To requeen or not to requeen
> Message-ID: <5546AC98.2080704 AT gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"; Format="flowed"
>
> Brad,
>
> There are always a few laying workers in a hive. Normally, the
> housekeeping bees recognize their eggs as being "not right" (for
> example, they don't have queen marker pheromone on them) and they eat
> them. However in a hive that feels it is hopelessly queenless, the
> worker bees accept the laying worker eggs as being "normal" and act as
> if they have a queen; they are engaging in a last-chance Hail Mary play
> to at least get some of their genes out in the world through drones. So
> technically the real problem isn't laying workers, it is worker bees
> that embrace laying workers.
>
> How long this takes can vary a LOT between colonies and between bee
> races, from two weeks to never. It also depends on how long it has been
> since there has been worker brood, not just how long it has been
> queenless. If you were to periodically insert a frame of open worker
> brood into a hive, that would quash the laying-worker-acceptance problem.
>
> I do think you are right, though -- I think that as a rule of thumb a
> hive that is truly queenless for a month is clearly on the brink of
> accepting laying workers. And it takes about a month for a new queen to
> go from egg to evidence that she's there (eggs/brood). So the beekeeper
> is left scratching his/her head. You can't successfully insert a new
> store-bought queen if the hive is secretly queen-right. But you don't
> want to wait far too long before doing something. That's why the
> standard advice of inserting a frame of brood in the questionable hive
> to see if they build queen cells is a really good practice. Not only
> will it signal you regarding the queen-right status, the pheromones from
> the open worker brood will help delay acceptance of laying worker brood.
>
> This is where understanding what is going on in the hive and deciding
> what is LIKELY happening is important. If someone says that their hive
> is queenless & broodless in October, that is likely a very different
> thing than if they say it is queenless & broodless during spring
> swarming season. In the latter, in my limited experience, about 100% of
> the time the bees are doing what they've been doing for the past 50
> million or so years: reproducing via swarming, which involves a break in
> brood and a period where the hive deceptively appears queenless. The
> human panic factor kicks in slightly earlier than the natural resolution
> of the issue. Patience is called for, as well as a quick refresher in
> bee math. I'm a guilty as the next guy as far as impatience and
> forgetting the math, and I have lots of sad stories as a result. But I'm
> trying to do better!
>
> Randall
>
> On 5/3/2015 4:37 PM, Hamsiba Family wrote:
>>
>> Randall,
>>
>> I have seen lots of info on timing of queens. Is there a rule of thumb
>> on when the threat of laying workers really starts to get likely?
>>
>> It seems that it must be more than a few weeks as we are often told to
>> wait a few weeks to see what is happening.
>>
>> Just trying to up my mentoring game.
>>
>> Thanks, Brad
>>
>> On May 3, 2015 2:35 PM, "Randall Austin" <ra41717 AT gmail.com
>> <mailto:ra41717 AT gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> George,
>>
>> It is way too early to expect to see evidence of a queen. The
>> article <here
>> <http://www.baileybeesupply.com/docs/i_need_to_buy_a_queen.pdf>>
>> discusses the queen development timeline that you can use to find
>> the earliest possible date that you may see eggs. The earliest you
>> can usually expect to see eggs after swarming is a little less
>> than 3 weeks, but this depends on a host of factors. As a
>> practical matter, brood at least 3 or so days old are a lot more
>> obvious to see than eggs, so add another 6 days to the whole deal
>> before it is clear that there is a queen.
>>
>> If you introduce a store-bought queen during the swarming
>> queen-replacement process, the workers will most assuredly kill
>> the high-dollar queen. So your situation (which is shared by all
>> of us at some point) calls for patience. From your description,
>> everything should be progressing as it should; wait it out and
>> check again in a few weeks.
>>
>> Randall
>>
>> On 5/2/2015 6:36 PM, George Morris wrote:
>>> Help/ advice!!!
>>> We have 2 hive that both swarmed this spring, and unfortunately we did
>>> not catch the swarms. But after we inspected the hives, we initially saw
>>> a queen in both hives. Swarming happened over a week ago on both hives
>>> and we went into them today to look for the queens and or fresh eggs. We
>>> saw neither. The question is, are we early for seeing eggs laid by a new
>>> queen, even if we didn't see the queen, or should we be seeing signs of
>>> eggs at this stage. Should we requeen, with purchased queens or give it
>>> some more time?
>>>
>>> Any advice is good advice, and if someone has some time to come over
>>> and take a look, that would also be appriciated. Our hives are located
>>> on the west side of Chapel Hill.
>>>
>>> George
>>> _________________________________________
>>> ocba mailing list | North Carolina Beekeeping|http://www.theocba.org/
>>> Manage Your
>>> Subscription:http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ocba/
>>>
>>
>>
>> _________________________________________
>> ocba mailing list | North Carolina Beekeeping| http://www.theocba.org/
>> Manage Your Subscription:
>> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ocba/
>>
>>
>>
>> _________________________________________
>> ocba mailing list | North Carolina Beekeeping| http://www.theocba.org/
>> Manage Your Subscription: http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ocba/
>
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL:
> <https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/ocba/attachments/20150503/bcc89145/attachment.html>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Subject: Digest Footer
>
> ________________________________________
> ocba mailing list | North Carolina Beekeeping| http://www.theocba.org
> Manage Your Subscription: http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ocba/
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of ocba Digest, Vol 122, Issue 5
> ************************************





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page