I want to let my hives produce their own queen when they think it is time too. What are some of your thoughts on the idea? I want to do things more natural, but I don't want to lose my hives.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfaqs.htm#requeening (http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfaqs.htm#requeening)
If you're noticing that the hive needs a new queen and they haven't already raised one, I would requeen. Usually they figure it out BEFORE I do as it should be.
If you have a good strong hive and they raise swarm queens they are feed royal jelly and treated as queens from day one they produce nice size queens cuz alot of nurse bees tend to them. Believe it or not i think some of the best queens come from those produced from your local bee stock that are adapted to your area Chris
I also believe that local queens are the way to get her done.
If a queen fails during non-Winter months, my bees take care of it. My risk is if she tries to fail on me during the Winter. That's a real pain as they won't raise a new one until March in my area.
So, I believe in having a few Nucs around. Any queen in her third year gets dropped into a Nuc towards the end of the flow (the hive should be at rolling and enough brood coming on to not have a negative effect on your harvest, if you care about that.) Your main hive will raise a queen for sure. I'd whack the old queen after she gets the Nuc up and going and let them raise a queen too.
So, if the hive queen is poor for some reason, I have a backup. If she's great, you have a Nuc you can sell or overwinter or both.