G'day,
It is now the beginning of Spring here in Queensland. I do not see many Drones in the hives as yet. Is it too early to make a Nuc from a strong hive.
Cheers Perry
Perry
I live in South East QLD and the drones have been very active since mid July. I have had 5 swarm calls hiving the first one on the 12 August.
I do not think it is too early to start a nut from a strong hive.
Kevin
Quote from: kanga on September 06, 2015, 07:11:14 AM
Perry
I live in South East QLD and the drones have been very active since mid July. I have had 5 swarm calls hiving the first one on the 12 August.
I do not think it is too early to start a nut from a strong hive.
Kevin
I'd be doing some splits but I can't get queens till the end of the month.
Been thinking of buying cells and seeing how they go instead of queens, I think I'll try that in November when I do a big split.
G'day Kanga & Dave86,
Thank you for your replies. It looks like it will be a fine day today. I found a queen cell in one of the hives so I will put that in with eggs & brood. I hope it will be successful.
Thank you for your help.
Perry
Aussie,
If you want to make splits, open a few drone cells and see if the larvae have purple eyes.
If the drone cells have purple eyes, then they will be old enough to mate when the queen is ready to mate.
Don't worry about killing a few drone cells. Bees in your apiary will not be mating with your queens.
Jim
Why won't the drones in your apiary mate with your queens?
I thought drones had to be 30+ days to reach max sperm production.
Your drones normally only fly about 1 KM (.6 mile) Your queen usually flies 2 to 5 KM. (1.2-3 miles). Mother natures way of preventing inbreeding. Your drones are able to use any hive they return to so they could move further away from their home hive but your queen will be mating with from 12 to 60 drones and taking a sample of each to store. That way even if she mated with one of her sons, only a small portion of the eggs are from him and half of that sperm is from his grandfather and it is viable. The sperm that is from her side will bee removed by the bees.
A drone takes 24 days to hatch. I think around day 21-22 they turn purple. If you add 12 plus 21 you have 33 days. So if you graft eggs that are 4 days old when the drone larvae is 21 days old, the drones will bee old enough.
Jim
""That way even if she mated with one of her sons,"" :cheesy: :cheesy: :cheesy: :cheesy:
Wake up, Jim. If she isn't mated, how can she have sons?"
OK Wally, you got me. I should have said brothers.
Jim
If you look through the literature it seems that drones fly 1 to 7 miles to Drone Congregating Areas (DCA)
If the drones only fly a km from the hive, how do DCA's form in random areas in relation to hive locations?
In reverse to not mating with your own drones, why would you not won't to have plenty of drones to flood the DCA with drones of quality, rather than take "pot luck" if the local drones are of dubious quality.
There are some of hives that i wish would not lay drones a I would not want (if possible, probably not) my new quality young queens mating with some of these drones.
For this reason most of our genetic improvement has been by using mated queens.
Drones spend their lives going from one hive to another.The MATURE drones in your hive were not raised in it. By the time a drone finds a queen, it may have traveled 20 miles or more, even tho it only traveled a mile from the hive it left that day.
Hi Iddee
So how do queen breeders produce queens of quality if the virgin queens are being mated by any old drone from 20 miles away 3 weeks ago.
How do you control genetic improvement with out drone control?
The one I know locally here, who raises approx. a thousand queens weekly in season, gives free queens to any beekeeper within a few miles of his apiary. He then uses drone frames in some of his hives to saturate the area with more drones than would occur naturally. Other than that, I guess it's just a hope and a prayer.
Quote from: iddee on September 09, 2015, 06:29:52 PM
""That way even if she mated with one of her sons,""
Wake up, Jim. If she isn't mated, how can she have sons?"
Wait.
Drones come from unfertilized eggs.... nevermind. Brand new queen- therefore no offspring(sons).
Sent from my LG-E970 using Tapatalk
Hives are at present full of queen cells. Taking off nucs and adding supers to try and control the swarming.
Will run out of nucs beforeI finish going through all the hives at the present rate.
Already caugt a swarm from my own ives and it is only September.
Where are you Oldbeavo?
Mick (600 posts)
Kyabram in Nth Victoria, bees are on canola
Plenty of drones here and plenty of swarms.
Done some splits ( SE Qld) but with my own queens. Queens are difficult to get and this is slowing the nuc production for me...
Great Clover flowering in the valley and clover always means swarms.
Hi Max2
You don't let your nucs that are split off rear their own queens?
90% of the nucs we split have one or multiple queen cells from the hive and so have a new queen fairly quick.
If we are not happy with how the hive develops over the season then it will be requeened.
>So how do queen breeders produce queens of quality if the virgin queens are being mated by any old drone from 20 miles away 3 weeks ago.
The genetics I want are "any old drone..." I want the wild drones. They are surviving without treatment. They are not inbred. They have that vigor that only comes from "wildness". The domesticated, controlled bred queens I've seen in the last 20 years are exactly what I want to avoid. They have not impressed me.
>How do you control genetic improvement with out drone control?
You surrender to natural selection and control the part that you can.
"Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can't control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible."--Epictetus