Bee keepers replacement queen? Russians or?

Inspected my hives today. Out of 10 it looks like 5 do not have queens. One had some queen cells. One had older caped brood and eggs last week but no eggs or uncapped brood today.

I tried to requeen with virgin queens a few weeks ago but I didn't see them or any eggs. They were also humming like they were queen less.

One was a split I tried.


So I think I will double check this weekend and if no queen I will combine the smallest ones with my new swarms and re queen the larger hives.

I'm planning on driving to man lake after work on Friday to pick up some mated queens and my mentor suggested Russians ,he says that they winter better and produce well but may be a bit more aggressive than Italians. They have Italians and Russian queen hybrid mated with Italians as well.

What do you like.

All my bees are from swarms. I have had 100% winter survival my first two winters. It the spring when they swarm and farmers spray when I loose my quees and have trouble. Maybe I was just needing to requeen anyway but this will be my 3rd summer and I may not get any honey yet again. ( first year swarms I just feed and let build so no honey the firs summer)

What queens do you prefer and why?

PF,

In bad, rainy, cool weather it can take a week "or more" for virgin queens to fly out and breed. Then two to four days after that to lay and then very small patches of eggs for a few days. If I anticipate a hive might be queen less and they are still strong, I put a frame of less that 3 day old eggs from another hive in it. Within 3 days they will be drawing out a queen cell unless you have laying workers.

If you have queen cells they will not accept a new queen unless all cells are destroyed. You could put the queen cell frames above a strong hive with a queen excluder between. You would need to drill a hole under the hand hole on the box big enough for the new queen to fly out and breed. Once she is laying you can start a hive or join her with another queen less hive using a newspaper.

How to join hives and how to get rid of laying workers is another lesson.

TrapperKent
45 years of bee keeping

As of today I don't have any laying workers. Had that problem on two hives last year. Learned to stay up on my hive inspections in the spring. But I didn't have a hive with extra open brood I was willing to put in with them. So I put a screen between one with laying workers and a queen right hive on the bottom with the entrance facing position directions. I figured after 3 weeks it should correct and I could combine them. But it didn't work. I think the farmer sprayed and I lost the queen on the bottom during that time or I didn't freeze laying workers frams or just remove them. Either way it did not work


Again this year my only queen right hives are this years swarms and they have only been hived a week or two. They only have one to 3 frams with brood and smaller populations. So I'm not willing to take anything from them yet.

It's a definite learning experience and a fun and frustrating journey. I never dreamed I would consider calling into work just so I could check on my bees.
Hopefully this weekend some of those queen less hive have some egg in them and not 4 or 5 per cell laying workers eggs. Part of the reason I want to get this re queeing done fast. Waiting on these virgan quees during the honey flow and watching to population stagnate is tough.

Any preference on breed of bee?

I think I need to start requeening in the summer because with swarms I'm probably getting old queens and by spring thay are past their prime. A young queen should hit the ground running. Also I need to work on my swarm management.

I had had Russian queens twice and won’t use them again.
They are swarmy and queens stop laying for any reason like when nectar stops coming in.

They did not over winter any better and had a very small clusters.
I been keeping carnolien queens and do pretty good overwinter even here in Alaska.

I tried two splits with Saskatraz queens last summer but lost them both over winter. My fault on that one and might try another split with one this summer.

Check your bees once a week and watch for loaded queen cups.
Once they get swarming on their mind it’s hard to stop it.
Shake every frame of brood once you find a loaded cup and knock them down and once you get past swarm season your good to go.

most that try the russians hate them

I'm a Saskatraz or Carniolan guy. The Saskatraz I've had are unbelievably calm.
I've had bees in the past that would attack from 10 feet away and would chase for a hundred yards, those were MN Hygienic from nucs but I think the company I bought them from were bad to them.
The Saskatraz I've had are the exact opposite, majority of the summer I don't even where a suit because they are so calm. They produce honey nicely as well.

Kent gives spot on advice. I also would utilize the frames with queen cells you already have and split them up in the queenless hives. Just make sure to remove all attached bees off those frames when you introduce them into another hive. As well - leave at least 2 cells in the hive they are in so they can have a queen.
I do not like Russian queens. I prefer minnesota hygenic or vsh italians if I was buying a queen. I have raised all my own the last 5 years and some are excellent and some are not.....
Seeing my own home raised queens start laying a good pattern is like raising a prized heifer.........it is something I really enjoy about my bees.
in my opinion own - if you have 10 hives - you can raise your own queens just fine - as stated above, without laying workers, a frame with eggs under 3 days old can be placed and queen cells should be pulled out. Those cells then can be utilized in multiple hives or you can repeat the process with multiple frames.

Quit buying bugs and learn how to let them make their own (It's SIMPLE) You will usually get better/stronger bees in the end, too. And quit worrying about what breed. Most end up being mutts down the road anyhow...which I will argue is better.

That said, It kind of depends on your end goal. If it's purely honey production then buy away as you will lose a little time in the self sufficient make your own queen stage.

Most of us know meaner bees "Generally" put up the most honey. So maybe Russians are your answer. Best to just have more and gentler bees, IMO.

Start now for next years hive count/Honey production. You can turn your remaining 5 hives into 10-15 without buying bees. Then double that next year (or more) if you wanted to....and quit buying those inferior california wimpy bees. Well they don't survive well up here anyhow.

And never toss out or squish swarm cells. They make GREAT queens. Better that what most can graft.

Calvin, how do you winterize your hives?

Making queens after the summer equinox (june 21) is also very beneficial for varroa brood breaks and having a queen rearing to go next spring. I have read and proven that queens raised after this date will have no issues with varroa this winter and as long as they are a proven layer will be what you want starting your hives next spring. Most guys like to re-queen in spring - but I like to re-queen in late June/July. These queens really turn it on and make a nice hive going into fall/winter that comes on gang busters early spring.

I had and caught 3 virgan queens hatching and put them into hives that were queen less and made one split. I also left 2 queen cells caped but not hatched in a hive. It seem not of that worked and the waiting to check had been Killing me since I was worried about laying workers.

I had one swarm out it had 9 hatched queen cells. That one had messed up comb and I could not get into the bottom box. I had left comb hang from the bottom of frames out of swarm traps and put then in two deeps because the lower comb was full of eggs and brood. I was afraid of messing them up cutting it off and putting into frames. That was a lesson I won't repeat. This year they have all got cut off and rubber banded to frames regardless.

My goals are to be able to keep 10 health productive hives and once I get good at it an have good bees expand and possibly get into raising queens and bees. But that's down the road.

I seem to have no problems catching swarm or over wintering. But mid spring everything goes down hill.

My bees must be mild. I normally work them in a vail and t shirt with little smoke. Most of my stings come from smashing one. Except during the Darth. I did catch a few from a hive in my out yard yesterday. I sh I understand have lit the smoker.

If my queen cell have not hatch when I get home on Friday I will try again moving then to a queen less hive but think the wait will cause laying workers.

I will pick up a few Saskatraz queens for the larger population hives and combine the small ones with some new swarms with a good queen.

Will a new queen be OK in a hive with few nurse bees and no caped brood? There won't be nurse bees to take care of the new brood she lays.

Just a note on the MN hygienic.

The hygienic trait in this line is based upon a recessive gene. I long suspected that as I never got a daughter queen as good as the queens I bought. I confirmed that when I had the opportunity to speak to Dr Spivak at a state conference. She said it was indeed a recessive trait and the University of Minnesota maintained that trait by controlled mating by setting up the mating yards with drone mother colonies carrying the trait and that it is easily lost if you don't.
The University has since gotten out of maintaining the stock and passed the program off to private breeders but according to her only a couple breeders are trying to keep the trait by controlling the drones.

I'm another one that likes a late queen. Not so much for varroa, though a brood break mid to late summer is good, but they are less prone to hit the trees come spring.

I've never had Russians though undoubtedly I've got their genetics as my closest beekeeping neighbor a mile from me runs Russians exclusively. She swears by them but I can't figure out why since I get a call or text from her once or twice a week saying "swarm headed your way". I think she spends more time climbing trees than working the bees.
But I suspect her varroa plan is based on splitting and swarms.

Agreed locally adapted is the way to go with one caveat. If you start with junk you'll end up with junk.

I went down the feral survivor pathway for a few years. While there are indeed ferals surviving here the adaptations they've made to survive such as small brood nests and shutting down brood at the the drop of a hat when the flow stops makes for small colonies that only put up enough honey to barely get by make them useless to a honey producer. Don't get me wrong they are good tough little bees that don't require a bunch of treatment to live they just don't put up surpluses worth their keep.

What I try to do now is to work from stock that is productive AND has the lowest mite counts with emphasis given to mite counts. I've been able to do some upgrading by bringing in new VSH queens from time to time trying to blend in some good stuff.

Ive had Italians, Russians and Carniolan queens....

By far, my favorite is the Carniolans due to their gentle nature and honey production. Seems like mine like to forage more than the others on cool, overcast days as well.

I did pick up some packages early this year from David at "Barnyard Bees" in Chatsworth, Georgia. They have went like gangbusters since I installed them in late March. VERY gentle bees I will add, I can weed eat around my hives and they dont pay a bit of attention to me.

That was my thinking since I have only had local caught swarms. Same result two springs in a roll so figured it may be time to try something different. I'm blown away by the be population in the guys hives on y tube. Mine don't get that high.

But I'm new to it an still learning and thinking about trying new thing but afraid to mess them up at the same time. One thing is for sure what I'm doing works great in winter no so much in spring or for producing honey
On the bright side I have not had to buy extraction equipment.

Learn to make your own Queens from your own stock.
Very easy to do.
Personally, I have used Carniolans for about 20 years.
You will be able to control your bee yard and control the mites.
Read up on how to do this. Plenty of material available.
Always keep a NUC or two available for emergency's.
I always replaced my Queens in late fall to start like gangbusters in late Winter and early Spring.
Have fun...

Providence Farm

here is my primary advice----try to be patient this time of year eventhough it is hard. I primarily sell overwintered nucs come spring (last week April usually) but ocassionally sell some nucs and queens this time of year also. The number one call I get during the month of May (which covers most of our swarm season) is "I need a queen, mine is gone". The vast majority of the time Ive concluded things arent as bad as what they think. Often when things look the most hopeless for the colony all of a sudden a new queen starts laying. Heavy type swarming like you seem to be describing can make for a mess; more cells made the bigger the potential mess as the fighting and after swarming commences. And the bigger the colony numbers the longer it might take for things to get back to normal. Then throw in spring weather that delays flights and it gets even more funky. And for a beekeeper without some experience what they tend to focus on is no brood, backfilled nest, etc which causes immediate panic of queenlessness. What they dont pick up on is the very minor differences in behavior exhibited by a colony with capped cells vs newly emerged virgin vs 1-2 day old mated queen vs queen that is just laying very first eggs. So patience can be a blessing as you wait this out and hope for the best. Now there is a time to panic when all chances of mated queen are over and maybe you are at that point. This is about the time of year when i start to see my first mating failures and start shaking bees out of equipment so you may be at that point also.

here are some general comments about coming out of winter and going into spring time in "northern areas" (not sure where you are at within Indiana but its close enough to Michigan that this might apply). March and April can be the hardest months to endure. There might be early pollen and nectar from willows and maples etc but you might see two very different scenarios play out (along with anything in between). At one extreme, big colonies that have limited ability to environmentally regulate---in other words what we might generally refer to as being seen in italian/southern style bees that have the potential eat them selves outta house and home when wintered in the north. They'll overdo the brood and then the weather will turn horrible and you'll be left wondering if they make it to the dandelions or not. Nothing wrong with this but gotta keep it in mind for managment. Versus smaller clustered bees that tend to regulate to environment but have their own issues----trait that would widely be exhibited by carnica type stock. They winter on small clusters from fall to spring but they tend to boom once weather changes which immediately puts them on the verge of swarming. Again nothing wrong but takes plenty of management also. But what i've seen as the biggest issue come spring since tracheal and varroa arrived has been the colonies that simply colapse or struggle to recover come spring. these colonies often have been impacted by issues startign all the way back in fall and by spring they are simply at the end of the road. then add in issues of contaminates that have impacted the life span of typical queen and there are way more spring queen failures than what i ever saw years before or what my dad and earlier generations ever recall seeing.

couple thoughts on dealing with spring time swarming and splitting, etc given what you wrote----not always but often trying to give colonies virgins can be as tricky as giving mated queens. You'll have awful good success using virgins to make splits from a colony where that virgin was raised but sometimes giving them to colony that didnt raise them without an introduction can be harder. if you find capped cells your success rate in moving those between colonies will be much better. Additionally, mating out of smallest amount of frames/bees/resources gives you the quickest route to a laying queen. you can feed queenless bees back to the mating setup and end up back in business pretty quickly.

i'm not sure what to tell you regarding various bees to try. i've tried all of them with associated pluses and minues. if you think that you will be routinely buying queens maybe try a handful of various types and go from there. if you arent planning to routinely buy queens just keep in mind that after a couple of generations youll get a mix of all type of genetics anyway particularly with only a few hives. it takes a decent amount of drones or good isolation to maintain particular traits within a stock. not sure what you have to deal with in your area---around here when mating i try to stay out of the intense commercial apiary areas but i'm still negatively impacted by the southern and california packages that are brought in. of popular bees here are my thoughts which might be different than what others will say but its something to start with:

italians---i'm not a huge fan for the primary reason that they often get hurt by the weather.. when i know the basics genes have mixed in i tend to do pretty good with them when run as 3 deep configuration which gives a buffer of resources come spring time as im not a bee feeder. in this climate they do horrible for me when run as single deeps; nearly guaranteed starvation whereas other bees will do fine in that configuration. they have lots of bees and brood for alot of the year and as such have the potential to make lots of honey if the nectar is there. And they tend to be friendly. late brood rearing can make for good winter bees to help make it to spring and keep them from petering out but the flip side is late brood rearing can also lead to longer mite cycle. one significant advantage to being in the north is a lengthier brood break that helps with varroa. my opinion is run of the mill italians tend to be less tolerant of disease overall but something like minnesota hygenics are basically a highly selected version of them with some other traits tossed in that are much more disease tolerant .

carnica--on one hand i like them alot as they slow right down for the winter. make small clusters, very quiet on combs in winter, dont take much stores. they also make for a nice cross exhibiting hybrid vigor and great production; can be run in single box and make good comb honey. but they are potentially swarmy buggers. and along with vigor comes the bad cross outcomes like the extreme swarming potential. i've got plenty of genes from old school carniolans and new worlds mixed in. and if i'm looking for something with a potential true pedigree to add to gene pool i often get a few of these out of california. as a rule they are pretty good across a range of brood disease and sue cobbey put alot of selection pressure on them for their hygenic traits. if i was picking between italian and carniolan for north it would be the latter.

caucasian---i like a bee that can seal up for the winter with propolis so i like them. i tend to add some to the mix every now and then.

buckfast---weaver american version provides a strong basis of the stock ive worked with for long time. reason being it held strong tracheal resistance and were primary survivors that we were left with back in the 80's. whereas most of the italian type stock croaked when tracheal mites hit. i havent purchased them in really long time. they also ended up with a reputation for being on the hot side as africanized bees moved into texas. and even prior to that timeframe they were known to produce ornery crosses but i still always found them to be highly disease tolerant and worth having. in recent years canadian version of buckfast has been a favorite of mine instead and i've used a bunch of canadian buckfast breeders. they are a favorite but you arent going to be able to readily purchase them either. but i wouldnt be afraid to try some weaver stock and that might be an option for you.

russians----i used them alot on the front end when they were first released by usda. as one of the prominent breeders of them told me afterwards when he was looking at my resulting colonies--they sure dont seem to nicely combine with your stock. i had a hard time seeing immediate upsides to their genes but saw lots of bad negatives arise--extreme swarming, tendency to chimney brood nest all way to cover, fairly ornery. HOWEVER i eventually saw alot of mite grooming traits pop up and i assumed it most likely came from their gene pool. If you opt to buy russians, i'd suggest getting them from someone in russian honey bee breeders association so that you are likely to get something that is pure as you might not be so happy with a cross.

vsh---worth looking at. i stay fairly quiet on the subject as we were involved in providing a large % of stock to the usda which they utilized to produce what is now called vsh. if you start trying to make splits and your own queens in future it could be worth adding to gene pool but i wouldnt try looking for a production vsh queen to buy

last note---dont get lulled into being complacent about winter. its great that you had two good winterings but its a small sample. you'll find that everything looks great for 7-8-9 years in a row and then bammmm you start heading off the rails. beekeeping and varroa tend to run in a constant cyclical flow now. often just depends where you are at on the rollercoaster ride at any given year

Good luck with the bees

Thanks for the replies. I do have a lot to learn ordered a few Saskatraz. Getting in a hurry and wanting then to be here if I need them this weekend. Was it a good choice I don't know. May have just wasted mone and should have wated for more swarms.

Who knows maybe I will open them up on Friday and have new laying queens ? I hope so then I will kno what I'm doing was right and I need more patience. But then I will have 3 queens to do something with. Guess I could start a nuke but most of my have populations are a bit low for that.

I used to have bees until they started spraying all the fields around me with insecticides that killed a lot of my bees.
I preferred either Buckfast bees or Starlines. They were pretty good honey producers and fairly docile.

I have never owned a Russian bee but have worked other peoples yards that have Russians and they are some of the meanest bees out there. I would not wish those bees on anyone. I had a neighbor that had some about 1/2 a mile from me and I was raising Carniolans my Carnies queens were very gentle but there daughters were mean. All I can figure is that they were breeding with the Russians from his hives. If you have a long nectar flow the Russians would be great but they come out of winter small. It is hard to beat an old calm Italian queen in my book.
As for Swarms if you catch 10 of them you might have 1 that will be a decent hive, The commercial beekeepers make a living with there bees and they have good stock. If you want good honey producers start looking at there stock.
As for Survivor stock that everybody claims is so good, They are just a bunch of swarming machine that will swarm at the drop of a hat and that is the reason for them surviving.

That's interesting. I bought one Buckfast nuc a couple of years ago. They wintered well the first year and died just before it warmed up around here this spring.

By far the meanest SOB's I've ever been around. Really quick to attack without provocation and they'd chase you for a hundred yards. That was one hive you didn't walk in front of.

ETA- My buckfast bees came from Texas. Little buggers...mean little buggers.

Got into my hives this morning at the house. I have 8 here and only 3 looked good wit young brood when I left last week for work. I saw 2 queens in 2 of the other but no eggs or brood so young queens not laying. One of the others had caped queen cells. That left 2 with no queens..

I ordered 3 Saskatraz queens and had them on hand. So I introduced them to the hives with no queen, and made 2 nuks from queen cells from the other hive removed the rest and put my 3rd queen into that hive..

My thinking was to avoid the couple week wait and uncertainty untill the queencells would hatch mate and start laying. Also if the nukes take off I will have extra resources if I need them and 2 more hives if they do well.

I even have a hand full if honey frams I need to get spun out...

Things are looking up and I'm sure learning a lot this year.

Now to research the best things to plant for honey crops. I plant buckwheat staggered a a few weeks and timed during the Darth. I just planter about 1/2 acre of sun flowers, my peach and pear trees are still small. I have places I don't mow probably 15 acres that is covered with golden rod and milk weed.

I think I will plant some areas with crimson clover again and some white clover.

This is what I did, let the hive develop a queen. My first hive came from a wild bee tree and they were great honey producers but tough to work unless you had a great nectar flow. Kent has some good info, joining the weaker hives with newspaper above the supers will get 2 weak hives stronger.

Most Buckfast queens are out of TX. Texas has a sustaining population of Africanized bees. Any Buckfast queen any one receives in our club is fine until superseded, which they do regularly, and then the Africanized heritage kicks in and they are mean as snakes. Their disclaimer states they can not warrant no Africanized heritage. Canada would be the only place to get pure Buckfast queens but cost is prohibitive unless a large order is made due to a tax they charge at the border when crossing.

When using queen cells for raising queens in another hive, do not shake the bees off the frame as this will shake the queen larva down to the bottom of the cell and she will die. Use you bee brush and brush the bees off. When looking at at hatched queen cells if the cell still has the hinged lid on it is is a fresh hatch within the last 3 days as the bees remove the lid around the 4th day.

A swarm that is not the prime swarm can have 3 or more virgins in the smarm due to the weather not be conducive to swarm for two or 3 or more days and the queens just keep hatching out. When you have them hived look for little knots of bees in front of the hive. They will be workers with a virgin in the center. These can be picked up and put in a queen cage by themselves and introduced in a queen less hive.

I am in AR and the first warm day in February I go into the brood nest and they will have started raising brood. If brood is on one side of two frames I put a full frame of honey between them, Most bees starve to death February and March here. Once they have a patch of brood and it turns cold they will cluster on the brood and even if honey is two to three inches away they will not break the cluster on the brood and move to it thus they starve with honey inches away. I am also feeding a heavy mix.

If low on supplies I put a queen excluder on top of the brood box then tips 6 quarts of heavy mix on top of it trying to get one or two right above the brood. They can feed on these even when the weather does not allow them to work the outside feeder.

TrapperKent