Improving Queen Acceptance
Some aspects of beekeeping are becoming increasingly frustrating. Queen introduction, once viewed as a simple management procedure, is quickly becoming one of the most expensive and complex chores in beekeeping. While most of the acceptance problems are symptomatic of changes in beekeeping within the last 20-25 years (intense disease pressures, mixing of variant races, old literature advising too short release times, and queen breeders’ rush to get queens to customers), one aspect of queen acceptance is overlooked by most beekeepers and queen breeders: queen maturity. To be successful in our current beekeeping climate and to counter some of the ill-effects of modern beekeeping, additional time in the mating nuc may hold the answer to part of the queen acceptance puzzle.
The chart below describes the acceptance rate of queens that have been allowed various amounts of maturing time in mating nucs following mating and initial egg laying. Note the dramatic increase in acceptance following 14 days in the mating nuc.
The chart below describes the long-term survival of queens that were allowed various amounts of maturing time in mating nucs following mating and initial egg laying. Again, note the dramatic difference 14 days makes in survival rates.
Considering the high demand for queens and the decreasing number of queen breeders, expecting that queens be given additional time in mating nucs is unlikely. While most queen breeders are interested in providing a quality product, their obligation extends only in proving a live queen that lays fertilized eggs. Once queens begin laying, their eventual supersedure is of little interest to queen breeders because they extend no guarantee beyond the aforementioned and always have plausible deniability—the beekeeper must have made an error, or it’s difficult to predict what a few thousand insects will do to a foreign queen.
Unfortunately, just short of rearing your own queens, there’s little that the hobbyist or sideliner can do. Smaller, local queen rearing operations may be able to accommodate a request for longing maturing times after mating, but few commercial operators will be interested in your request—even if you offer them additional compensation!
About the only solution to this problem is to introduce queens into the least hostile environment possible while they continue maturing. This is most easily accomplished by creating nucs with young bees and introducing the queens to the nucs rather than full-sized colonies. After the queens are accepted and laying, allow the queens a few weeks of maturing. Typically, after the queen’s offspring emerges, all is well, and the nuc can be used to requeen any colony.There’s always a chance that the queens will be superseded anyway, but usually this only occurs if there’s something fundamentally wrong with the queens: they’re poorly mated, diseased, or injured.
The solution, while labor intensive, may be the only procedure that will protect your investment in costly queens. Otherwise, you can let the bees handle your queen rearing needs, if you’re not trying to introduce specific genetics into your beekeeping. The other logical alternative is to buy more queens than you need with the intention of replacing those that are lost by supersedure.
May 22, 2011 • Beekeeping