- Hi there.
I'd like to talk you today about why I think it's a good idea to purchase queens from a
queen breeder or to raise queens yourself under controlled conditions.
This is opposed to just letting bees raise their own queens.
There's several situations where we might want to be getting a new queen in a colony.
If we split a hive or if we're requeening the colony.
So those are the two main times where you need to have a queen.
If we split a colony and let them raise their own queens, they're going to do that under
suboptimal conditions.
The reason for that is if we divide a hive, the colony is weaker.
So there's less nurse bees available.
And in an emergency situation, where they have no queen, in that split, bees start feeding
royal jelly to larvae.
Larvae that are between one and three days of age are bipotent.
So at all those ages, they can become a queen, if they're fed royal jelly.
But if you have a larvae that's already three days into developing towards a worker and
then it's fed the royal jelly, it produces an inferior queen.
So bees, or queens rather, reared under emergency supersedure conditions are automatically inferior
queens.
Because the first one to hatch out will be that three-day old queen, which is automatically
the worst queen.
And they're not raised under good conditions, where there's lots of nurse bees and so on.
Another reason that allowing colonies that we split to raise their own queen is less
than optimal is that when we just split every hive and let them raise their own queen, we're
not using any selection towards improving our colonies.
We're just multiplying the genetics we have in every hive, rather than trying to multiply
the genetics of our best colonies.
Another situation where we might want to split a hive is if it's preparing to swarm.
And if we do that with the swarm cells, that the colony is raising, that seems like a great
way to do it.
Those are nice, big cells reared under good, optimal conditions.
But the reason that is less than ideal is that when we're splitting hives that are preparing
to swarm, we're automatically breeding for swarming behavior.
We're not splitting the hives that aren't preparing to swarm.
We're splitting the ones that are preparing to swarm, and so we're breeding towards that
kind of a bee.
And it's very easy to breed for swarmy bees.
And that's one of our main goals, in trying to have our hives be productive, is to have
a minimum amount of swarming occur.
When a queen breeder raises queens, they take great care to select breeder queens to raise
their queens from.
And then they graft larvae that are the appropriate age.
Right after that larvae hatches out, from an egg.
If you're grafting those larvae that are just barely bigger than an egg, those larvaes produce
the nicest queens.
And if that larvae is put into a colony that has loads of young nurse bees, lots of nectar,
lots of pollen, then they're going to raise nice queen cells.
So you'd get nice cells reared like this.
Looks very much like a big cell that you would see in a swarming situation.
The runty little cells that you get in supersedure, they're smaller queens.
And it, 35% of the time, that bees are reared under an emergency situation, they're an inferior
queen and they will have to be superseded again by the bees.
So, it's a really good idea to try to have good quality queens in your colonies.
It prevents some issues later.
The queens live longer.
You have less difficulty with supersedure, and having that work out successfully.
And you have good genetics in your colony, if you're buying queens from a good breeder.
So that means your honey production will be better.
You'll have gentler bees.
Less tendency to swarm.
And they're just generally nicer bees to work with and you have much better success.
So, think about that, next time you're preparing to make splits or requeen your colonies.
The big breeders in our industry need our support too, so it's a good idea to be supporting
their considerable efforts in purchasing quality queens.
Thanks for watching.
Good luck with your bees.