How late to mate

[Jon]

I have a queen just started to lay in an apidea.
This one emerged on 22nd August so 45+ days from emergence to laying.
I have been checking it every few days since mid September and it is definitely the original queen.
There have been several days warm enough for a queen to fly and mate in the past week.
I still have colonies with drones as well.
I guess a betting man would put his money on drone layer but that should be clear within a week when there are larvae to check.

I had another start to lay last week but it was only 3 weeks from emergence.

[prakel]

I've recently done away with a handful of queens which emerged at the end of August but so far had failed to lay. Now, I did so knowing that I could be making a big mistake because there's been a dearth of forage at the mating site for over a month and many established queens had gone off lay for a while prior to the ivy finally starting to open. But, at this point with so much other stuff going on as well I decided to consolidate what I know to be good.

Regarding the drone layer issue, it may take longer than your week -if your bees are anything like mine early drone laying is quite common but soon sorts itself out, as is the phenomenon of multiple eggs in cells both after mating and when young (late summer) queens get going properly in the following Spring.

[fatshark]

I have two queens that emerged on the 9/10 September, were mated on the 22nd (saw the mating sign on one of them) and which now are laying well in 3 frame nucs. Capped brood confirms they are not (yet) drone layers.

My worry with these is whether they'll build up strongly enough to make it through the winter. Are you keeping her in the Apidea? If so, are you going to supplement it with more workers? The forecast here is for cooler weather and I suspect that'll put paid to significant amounts of new brood.

[Jon]

if your bees are anything like mine early drone laying is quite common but soon sorts itself out, as is the phenomenon of multiple eggs in cells both after mating and when young

This one had a patch of about 100 single eggs in cells in a good pattern, no misses or multiple eggs in cells.
I don't see a lot of drone laying, none this year iirc.

fatshark, I have about a dozen queens in apideas including 3 which were culled but not squished. Some of them are in triples which should be strong enough to overwinter. All depends when spring arrives. February would be nice as opposed to May.
Nothing ventured nothing gained.
Wish I had more bees to make up nucs.

[prakel]

This one had a patch of about 100 single eggs in cells in a good pattern, no misses or multiple eggs in cells.
I don't see a lot of drone laying, none this year iirc.

I see much more now than ever before (as I say, it soon passes and they then turn out good) but our bees are very different to what they used to be -in many ways; this year I've barely seen a yellow drone where a couple of years ago they were common enough. Maybe lots of people have been buying those 'calm, gentle, ideal for beginner' nucs which are advertised each Spring. Whatever, they're not the same bees that they used to be.

[Jon]

Just checked the Apidea at lunchtime and the brood is worker.
It was 21st August when this queen emerged (not 22nd as I said in the first post)
First eggs laid 8th October so I make that 48 days from emergence to laying.
I had about 10 other queens mate in September so no reason why this one should not have been laying earlier.
This is the 3rd mated queen I got from this apidea since June
The workers are from the previous incumbent who is now living in a top bar hive and doing very well apparently.
100% dark workers so that previous queen looks like a good'un.

1835 1834 1833.

Imagine if this was in a full colony and you were waiting for a virgin to mate and start laying. You would have assumed that the queen was duff or missing long ago and introduced another one.

[Adam]

If she continues laying that would be good. My queens that sat for a month or more before mating this year were not very special. Maybe they can hang on for longer in autumn? Even if she's not much good, I don't suppose there's any chance that she will be superceded until she is in a big colony next year so with luck she'll carry on.
Nevertheless a queen is a queen and worth hanging on to :)

[Jon]

I actually brought this apidea home to unite it to another one and found eggs when I was looking for the queen to squish her!
She had a lucky escape.
Some books will tell you 21 days is the limit and I have always considered 4 weeks to be a reasonable limit.
48 days is crazy.

I would love to know if she mated weeks ago and failed to lay of has she just flown and mated recently.
The queen has looked nice and plump like a mated queen for several weeks so maybe the former.

There were fresh eggs in the apidea at lunchtime.

[prakel]

I wonder whether it is a case of having waited to mate or whether, as I tentatively hinted in post #2, she did mate 'on time' but for some other reason (in my case a dearth) simply didn't start to lay until day 48. I'll be interested in seeing follow up reports next year on this one. I admit that my own gut instinct would have been to eliminate her on the rather dubious grounds that 'something' probably isn't right! But then, I'd possibly have missed an interesting learning experience too.

edit: cross posted with Jon's post #8.

[Jon]

Thing is, I had lots of queens fly and mate from the same site during this time span.
The site has had abundant pollen from himalayan balsam in this period so no reason why she would have been unable to get going.

[prakel]

This is the oddity of it that I find interesting. I'm inclined to think she probably mated earlier than later....but....am at a loss as to why the delay in starting to lay in your environment. 40ish days from emergence till mating seems an incredible gap if that is what happened.

[mbc]

If she continues laying that would be good. My queens that sat for a month or more before mating this year were not very special. Maybe they can hang on for longer in autumn? Even if she's not much good, I don't suppose there's any chance that she will be superceded until she is in a big colony next year so with luck she'll carry on.
Nevertheless a queen is a queen and worth hanging on to :)

I have a few queens I'd given up on that had started laying good looking worker brood by the time I'd got round to shaking them out. I've kept the queens and hopefully given them a chance of coming through the winter, but I have my doubts about how well they'll have been mated and will look on with interest to see how they get on in the spring given that they survive.
My question is, considering it is only either my very best colonies with ample everything, or my very worst with rubbish or no queens, who still had drones at the time of these queens mating, could these queens be useful breeding material ?

[Jon]

The theory is that AMM drones fly late in the season and in Marginal weather conditions. This is from Beo Cooper so anecdotal rather than fact.
In that sense the late matings may avoid the yellow drones.
October was very mild and had days when queens could have flown way past the middle of the month.
I checked in this apidea mentioned above yesterday and the queen is still laying and the emerging workers all look dark.
Even if a queen is not the best it could save a colony if you find a drone layer in March.
You could replace it with another queen in June if it is poor.

[The Drone Ranger]

hi mbc.
Just wondering how those late mated queens got on ?

[Jon]

I had 4 apideas come through last winter with late mated queens and I used them to make up nucs.
They seemed to be ok but I remember one or maybe two of them just disappeared over the summer.
I had several queens go awol this summer so I don't think that was anything to do with late mating.
The brood pattern was fine.

[mbc]

hi mbc.
Just wondering how those late mated queens got on ?

Some perished over winter and I lost track of the survivors amidst all the others, so as nothing about them stands out in my mind I presume they did ok. My record keeping isnt what it should be and sometimes its only the oddities that get noticed. I had a small batch of late mated queens again this year, only five out of over a dozen survived mating and my initial round of culling, a lot of effort for only 5 queens at a time of year I dont really need them.

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi mbc you will have to try the queen banking cages then

I've tried lots of hive numbering schemes etc to identify who the parent queen was but they all flopped
Everything is so organised from graft to hatch but after that I would need some coloured disk and number system or something.
It is easiest using a snelgrove because the daughter takes over but as soon as you do splits or move queen cells or grafting it all becomes difficult to keep a record [emoji620]