Timing of QC addition to nucs

[fatshark]

My first round of queen rearing started well and ended badly. I raised good-looking cells in a double brood box colony with a Cloake board and then split the colony multiple ways to make up essentially 2-frame nucs for mating (in a circle split).

Work commitments meant I had to split the colony and add the QC's on the same day. This was the 9th day after grafting. I checked yesterday. All the queens had emerged properly by the looks of the cells (flap still attached). However, many of the virgin queens were absent (and I'm usually OK at seeing them) and in the nucs with no obvious new virgins there were charged QC's being started, perhaps 2 days old.

My interpretation is that the virgins emerged properly but were then killed by the nuc who then started their own. The QC's were grafted from a different (better) stock.

Any idea? I'd usually use the cells on the 10th or 11th day after grafting, but can't think of anything else I'd do that was different. Hooper suggests making up nucs two days before use, culling any cells started and then adding the QC. I've done it on the same day and would have thought that the bees would have torn the cell down if they weren't happy with it.

Frustrating ... but on the plus side, the queens that were visible are looking good ... just fewer than I'd hoped (and with near-perfect conditions for mating this week predicted).

[The Drone Ranger]

Not my area of expertise fatshark (what is )
Even introducing a mated queen the spectre of them bumping her off and and raising cells instead is always there
Even when they are hopelessly queenless they occasional bump off the introduced queen then raise cells on her larva
Bees are very annoying when they are too stubborn to follow the plan :)


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[fatshark]

You'll see that this thread is a month and a half old by now ... so here's an update.

Of 8 nucs set out I finally got 7 mated and laying queens. My notes show that the queens were grafted on the 22/5, emerged on or about the 4th of June. My post was on the 5th of June where only 2/8 queens were visible and there were ~2 day old charged QC's in the majority of those with no visible virgin running about. I knocked back the QC's and left the boxes through two weeks of rubbish weather, more or less totally unsuitable for mating. By the 27th I had mated queens in 7 boxes, some only just starting to lay. It took a further fortnight to find and mark/clip these queens. The final nuc eventually developed drone laying workers and was shaken out.

I suspect that adding cells that were slightly less well advanced than usual meant the bees started QC's on young enough larvae. These were what I knocked back. Had I not done so I guess the colonies would have torn the cells down after the virgin was running about, or possibly after she was mated. The problem was the timing of my post-emergence inspection (which I try and do within 24 hours of emergence) which coincided with QC's being 2+ days old, clearly quite well developed and receiving lots of attention from the bees.

[mbc]

A good lesson in how tricky it can be to spot queens, especially with virgins not seeing her is no guarantee she's not there, the only guarantee with queens is if you can see her, she's there!

[Adam]

With a small nuc, there would have been a good chance that the introduced virgin as first out, would have killed the emergency queens before they emerged. You will often see queencells being broken down from the back in these cases.
Virgins can scuttle about and hide and are not always that big, so can be a bugger to spot. Even with mated and mature queens there are some that seem to present themselves at pretty well every inspection, others, I find, are rarely seen.
7 out of 8 is a fair result for the effort. It's great to see them laying. Hooray!

[The Drone Ranger]

You'll see that this thread is a month and a half old by now ... so here's an update..

I did notice that date fatshark but because I hardly ever have just given a nuc a queen cell I'm glad you gave us an update

I have a hive which quite honestly I was getting fed up of
Last year it was a drone layer and I posted a short video on replacing the queen
This Spring it started ok but turned into a drone layer again
I removed that queen and put in a mated laying replacement which disappeared
It was queenless now and I thought sod them they are all old bees no brood etc
Anyway one afternoon in a nearby bush I collected a little clump of bees which I thought might have come out of a mininuc
Too small I thought even for a cast
There wasn't much I could do with it so I just chucked it in the queenless hive
After a few weeks I checked sure enough a laying queen now but low and behold this is a pure yellow Italian queen
Goodness knows how that came about
Must get a picture of her to post


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