Queen Mating With Drones From Her Own Colony

[Jen]

I have a nuc that is determined to supercede their queen. She's doing everything right, eggs all day long. The bees and me are having a shoot out every week. I take out the queen cells. They don't kill the existing queen.

Now! I know bees have their reasons for offing their queen. But this is Not the time of year to do that! There are no drones in any of my hives to mate with. Virgin queen will go into flight and make a nice snack for a blue jay. Then I'll have a queenless hive late in the season.

Except!!! That this same nuc that is trying to supercede has made a patch of about 20+ drone cells that will be hatching in about a week.

I was told that a virgin queen should not mate with a drone from her own hive, it can make mean bees.

What should I do?

[apisbees]

Having a queen mate with its brothers, It makes small drones in worker cells, that the bees will cannibalize and eat once the eggs hatch into larva.
Keep killing any queen cells and continue to do this in the spring until there are enough drones for mating, then let them replace the queen.

[Jen]

Yaaaaay! I was hoping you would say that Apis! It means that I'm getting the bee math down a little bit more.

[Riverrat]

Question?  would it be easier to pinch the queen and combine with a weaker hive to over winter.  Then at spring do a split back to the nuc.

[Jen]

Rrat... I have a hard time pinching a queen that is still laying well. Why the bees don't like her I sure don't know. I was considering putting her in a new nuc, and letting the bees continue with the queen cells. But there aren't any drones in any of my other hives to mate with. The drones that are in this nuc are her bro's, so not a good idea this time of year.

The other thing is that I don't have a week hive right now either. 2 hives, 3 nucs, all full.

[Lburou]

Jen, while mating close to a virgin queen's hive has been reported, on the main, queens fly further than drones from the hive to mate.  So, the question really is, "are drones out there from hives within several miles"?  Queens have flown over ten miles in reliable tests in two studies I know of.  Drones stay closer to their hives while looking for queens.   A strong colony can keep a few drones all winter.  An undesirable drone mating too closely related to a queen will produce diploid drones, which as Apis said, are culled.  This causes a shotgun brood pattern. 

[Jen]

Lee "While mating close to a virgin queen's hive has been reported, on the main, queens fly further than drones from the hive to mate. 

     Then...'she has to know' what will happen if she mates with her brothers, that makes perfect sense to me that she would choose to find other drones further away.

Lee "are drones out there from hives within several miles"? 

     Pretty sure within 10 miles, yes. But surely not very many this time of year. That's where I believe the cards are against this mating this time of year.

Thanks you guys, so interesting learning the science side of it all