Unmated queens.

[Greengage]

Has anyone ever given thought to selling unmated queens or would ther be a market for them.

[fatshark]

LASI sell them (http://onlineshop.sussex.ac.uk/product-catalogue/sussex-enterprise/sussex-innovation-centre/lasi-bees/virgin-daughters-of-hygienic-breeder-queens) ... for £20.
No comment.
Presumably there's a market.
I've given them or sealed cells away ...

[Feckless Drone]

Well, you can sell anything! There is always a buyer for any kind of tat, or useless beekeeping equipment. But, perhaps the question could be out another way. Why would you buy an unmated Q ? And would any reason you can come up with really justify the risk of such a purchase?

Has anyone studied acceptance rates of mated v unmated Qs?

[busybeephilip]

Why would you buy an unmated Q ? A

Its all about genetics

[Calluna4u]

Virgin queens are fairly freely traded. Going rate about a fiver, available from several sources, mainly in Europe but in the UK too. Compare to buying mated laying queens the success rate is poor, sometimes very poor.

I know one guy who bought 300 virgins from Batsis in Greece. The outcome was not great.


To directly answer FD..........Not formal studies I know of, but with mated queens you typically get 85 to 95% acceptance, the cases I know of, which will only be at best 15 people purchasing, most said a success rate with virgins varying from 10% up to about 60%. One guy said they were all a success and this was a significant number too (very very dubious of that). However, freshly hatched virgins less than say 12 hours old, have a far better acceptance than shipped ones that may have been in cages with workers for several days. My father did it once in the 1970's with virgins from a breeder in Wales but only got about 35% that worked, so a huge cash loss in wasted splits and the consequent lack of a crop from two thirds of them.

[Mellifera Crofter]

I bought five virgin LASI queens and ended up with six nucleus colonies with laying queens.

I caught a small swarm near the colonies, and when I checked the colonies, found one of them with an open queen cell - so, of those two colonies I'm not sure which queen is the LASI one - but at least they all survived.

I suppose my purchase was rather expensive compared to a fiver a virgin as C4U said - but I didn't know about those, and I'm happy with these queens. I understand that their success in my apiaries also depends on the drones they met - but I think they've got a good start as far as genes are concerned and, if all goes well next season, will increase the gene pool among my bees. Will see.

Kitta

[Jon]

Mated queen introduction success should be well over 90% if you do it properly and follow instructions.
Biggest problem is usually a virgin already present which many beekeepers just wont acknowledge and they introduce an expensive queen to certain doom.

I introduce virgin queens hatched in the incubator to apideas with near 100% success rate.
The queen goes in first and gets a scoop of wet bees on top of her. The apidea is left closed for at least 24 hours after that.
Mating success then depends upon the weather more than any other factor, but you would expect maybe 70-80% to start laying properly under favourable conditions.
Don't know how Lasi manage to sell many at £20 a pop. I would value a virgin queen at a lot less than that.

[fatshark]

I don't know how LASI manage to sell anything through the University system for £20 ... presumably there are salaries, overheads etc. sliced off this ... ? Considering the price of high quality mated queens, the introduction success rate and the hit and miss nature both of getting them mated and to something desirable (genes-wise) they look pricey.

Nevertheless, I'm pleased they appear to be working for you Kitta and would be interested to hear how you get on with them. Are there piles of Varroa being turfed out of the entrance?

[Thymallus]

From what I've gleaned they are good at turfing out frozen killed dead brood.....but not tested for specifically removing larva with Varroa . i.e not Varroa Sensitive Hygiene. If I remember correctly LASI suggest they are treated for varroa as well, at least once a year....somewhere in their blurb.
Perhaps someone knows the answer to this but hygienic behaviour and 2 recessive genes (1 for uncapping, 1 for removal) have been well described for AFB resistant bees many moons ago. It's always been unclear (to me at least) what the difference is between these known traits and the LASI bees, except they have just been tested for freeze killed brood.removal with no AFB involvement.

[Mellifera Crofter]

... they look pricey.

Nevertheless, I'm pleased they appear to be working for you Kitta and would be interested to hear how you get on with them. Are there piles of Varroa being turfed out of the entrance?

No! But then, I've hardly seen any varroa in any of my colonies. As Thymallus said, I don't think they're sold as varroa biters.

Pricey ... I don't know - but they come from colonies that's been tested. I'm happy for now. I hope they met some of Jon and Drone Ranger's queens' drones on their mating flights.

Kitta

[mbc]

I sold 40 (actually 42) 10 day old queen cells for £80 a few years ago, apparently almost all hatched ok after travelling a couple of hours in an insulated box but only around 20 useful mated queens resulted. I usually expect slightly better results placing cells in my own nucs but if I'm honest I don't seem to get the returns I read about quoted elsewhere, if I graft 40 cells I usually get 35 plus queen cells that survive the cull, after placing these in nucs almost all normally hatch but when it comes to harvesting well mated queens with good laying patterns and no visible chalk etc the final total tends to be below 30, depending on the weather when they're mating sometimes nearer 20.

[fatshark]

I don't think my figures are much different to that and, when I've taught queen rearing to beginner groups, I usually say that a 50% return overall is to be expected. As my grafting has improved I get more picky over what constitutes a well-mated good queen, so I suspect my overall success rate hasn't changed too much over the last 5 years.

[Greengage]

My previous post does no seem to have popped up but no matter I cannot remember what I posted thanks for the info.I was chatting at a meeting recently and the discussion came up.One chap said he knows someone producing 1200 mated queens (Now I dont know but you have to listen to thunder) at €40 per pop. Anyway I suggested if you could get that many mated how many unmated could he produce. I always knew there was money in this bee keeping just figuring out how to get it out.:rolleyes: as I am always investing in bits and pieces of equipment and it just costs money, now I have more tools table saw, drill etc I reckon everything will be ok well that was my excuse for getting more tools.

[Feckless Drone]

Its all about genetics

So - I can see this might apply for AI, or if someone has access to an isolated mating station but for most people these conditions don't apply. If you buy in an unmated Q or even a Q cell, and get her mated (maybe with your own drones) then you must be relatively satisfied with the drone half of the equation and I assume their mothers.
Or you buy in an unmated Q and let her fly in your locality then its up to chance what you get after she mates so little control over genetics. Just seems a bit of wishful thinking and there are always people out there who will take advantage.

[mbc]

So - I can see this might apply for AI, or if someone has access to an isolated mating station but for most people these conditions don't apply. If you buy in an unmated Q or even a Q cell, and get her mated (maybe with your own drones) then you must be relatively satisfied with the drone half of the equation and I assume their mothers.
Or you buy in an unmated Q and let her fly in your locality then its up to chance what you get after she mates so little control over genetics. Just seems a bit of wishful thinking and there are always people out there who will take advantage.

But the drones produced in the first generation will all be the "brought in" genetics

[Jon]

But the drones produced in the first generation will all be the "brought in" genetics

Yes, and one short term fix is to buy a mated queen and requeen all your stock with her daughters. The drones the daughter queens produce will be of the same race/genetics as the initial queen you bought as they are haploid and their genetics is independent of whatever the daughters mated with.
If the queen you buy has mated with a dozen or more drones you should be getting a reasonable amount of variation in the stock.
You then graft from an unrelated queen in the expectation that she will mate with the drones from these colonies you have set up. Never guaranteed 100% though as drones can fly in from elsewhere.

[Thymallus]

In Jürgen Tautz book "The buzz about bees" they describe experiments on queen matings and drone congregation areas. To summarize:- the drones from your apiary will fly to a different congregation area (nearer) than the virgin queens, which will fly to another congregation area (further away). It seems to work like this to prevent inbreeding of queens with their own drones. So unless you have isolated mating sites where there is no alternative source of drones the chances of your queens mating with drones from the same apiary don't seem too good.
Without access to a good PCR machine etc it can be quite difficult to know exactly what is happening. I know that the exotic designer bees I use revert back to local mongrels within 2 generations, which suggests my queens are not mating with drones from my apiaries. And I live in a quite isolated area of North Yorkshire with the nearest beekeepers 3-4 miles away, so even with these distances it does suggest Tautz's findings may well be right.