Virgin Queens??

[brooksbeefarm]

Had a club member that sold virgin queens to beekeepers last year, he only had 2 hives at his house and didn't have enough drones to breed the amount of drafted queens he produced. I ask him how do you introduce a virgin queen to a queenless hive or start a nuc? He said people are buying them and are happy with them. Am i missing something here. Jack

[iddee]

A virgin queen will normally be accepted with direct release immediately. They just ignore her until she is mated.

[Woody Roberts]

I rekin they could get mated wherever they end up as long as they hadn't passed their time window. I don't know what that is though.

I believe if it's rainy and a queen don't mate when it's time she never will. I've read somewhere that a queen less hive would accept a virgin but have no experience here.

I'd have to be pretty desperate to buy one unless it was just to experiment with.

[Perry]

I have had queens that hatched out of swarm cells en mass, and I just walked over to some nucs that had cells in them and just gave 'em a puff of smoke and watched them walk right in undisturbed. I followed them to see how soon they started laying and I presumed that it was them and not necessarily the cells due to the time frame.

[riverbee]

what iddee said jack~
"A virgin queen will normally be accepted with direct release immediately. They just ignore her until she is mated."

and my concern would be what woody said about mating.

[LazyBkpr]

According to Adam Ebert (Ebert Honey here in Iowa) its approximately a two week time frame..    Haven't looked it up to verify that yet..

[brooksbeefarm]

I have never tried putting a virgin queen in a queenless hive? I have seen worker bees chasing virgins out of hives i have caught swarms in,but of course they usually have the old queen with them. The club member is going to sell queens again this year, but is taking his mating nucs to other club members who have several hives. Jack

[tecumseh]

I was told by one of my very old commercial mentors that he often ran mated queens in the front door simply by using a spray of very thin syrup with something smelly added (wintergreen, spearmint or vanilla) to temporarily mask the difference in odor.  never have tried that myself.... although since then I have had a couple of beekeepers who's reliability I would not question that have told me they do pretty much the same thing.

[apisbees]

It is becoming more popular to hatch cells in an incubator and introduce a virgin. It gives the queen breeder another chance to look and evaluate the queen to decide to give it to a colony for mating. Cells are much more fragile than the emerged queen. their are a percentage of queens that die in the cells and never emerge. Some queens are smaller than others and can be culled before they are mated. Dump her in syrup, fish her out and let her walk in.

[brooksbeefarm]

Back in the time before tec. iddee and HBH,  beekeepers used vanilla extract to mask the pheromone in the hive to introduce a new queen (around here anyway). My thinking was if you put a virgin queen in a queenless hive with a lingering pheromone of the old queen, the workers would run her out or kill her, and if they run her out she would have no where to go. Also if you put the virgin queen in a queen cage for them to release, they would ignore her because she would have little or no pheromone to be recognized as a queen, and like woody said, she has a short time window to be bred. All this thinking is making my head hurt. Jack

[Riverrat]

I'm not buying into the not enough drones to mate story. Unless it is late in the season there should be plenty of drones. The queens shouldnt be mating with drones from his hives or at least you don't want them to.  Queens fly miles away from the hive to breed.

[brooksbeefarm]

That was my thinking to rat, but where he lives they would have to be feral bees? he said there are no beekeepers in his area? Jack

[camero7]

I introduce virgin queens with ammonium nitrate. Get around 80% success.

[LazyBkpr]

 

As I understand it.. the commercial beekeeper  nearby uses virgin queens to re queen his hives.. he squirts them with hbh and syrup and runs them in, the guy with him installs a screen after the queen scurries into the hive.
   He says that 94% of the time the virgin kills the residing queen and takes over. He can re queen all of hic colonies this way in about a day and a half.

    Not sure I believe him, but intend to go and watch this spring while he does it.

[tefer2]

I'd like to hear Cam's method explained using the nitrate! How about the details Cam?