Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum

BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => REPRINT ARTICLE ARCHIVES => Topic started by: IndianaBrown on August 30, 2006, 12:32:40 am

Title: Russian Queenless Honey Factories?
Post by: IndianaBrown on August 30, 2006, 12:32:40 am

After reading this it may not be as crazy as it sounds, but it just doesn't seem right somehow...
http://www.russia-ic.com/education_science/science/breakthrough/237/

Title: Russian Queenless Honey Factories?
Post by: Mici on August 30, 2006, 07:28:55 am

i think it would be great to take advantage of tha last summer forage bees before they all die. i mean, if i knew hot-to i'd take all forage bees out of my hive this second, and take them somewhere away, wherever there is forage. i mean..does a hive even need forage bees when you start winter feeding??

Title: Russian Queenless Honey Factories?
Post by: Brian D. Bray on September 01, 2006, 12:48:32 am

That's like making a martini using a sour grape instead of an olive.

Title: Russian Queenless Honey Factories?
Post by: Mici on September 01, 2006, 04:04:13 am

You really think so??
i've been thinking, what IF!?!?!
next year, when i'll have enough bees, i'd take a frame from each hive and errm take the bees off and put them in another hive (as if i was trying to make another familly), with the queen bee inside of a cage. wouldn't they function normally?

Title: Russian Queenless Honey Factories?
Post by: mousestalker on September 01, 2006, 07:12:53 am

Sounds like the bee version of those ant farms that used to be advertised in comic books when I was a boy.

Title: Russian Queenless Honey Factories?
Post by: Brian D. Bray on September 01, 2006, 10:24:19 am

Mici,
If you keep the queen caged you lose the queen too.  mousestalker is right, it is the bee equivalent of the ant farm.

Title: Russian Queenless Honey Factories?
Post by: Mici on September 01, 2006, 11:08:29 am

so, the queen MUST lay eggs to survive?

where to get queen pheromones, i've heard of people dissolving old queens in alcohol

Title: Russian Queenless Honey Factories?
Post by: Brian D. Bray on September 02, 2006, 12:08:17 am

Mici,
The queen will be lost because there are no new nurse bees being hatched.  With the queen caged she can't lay, the workers die off and so does the queen.

You can give the bees the sense of a queen rite hive by using a swarm lure, which is how the queen in alcohol is used.

Title: Russian Queenless Honey Factories?
Post by: Mici on September 02, 2006, 03:30:30 pm

thanks, i didn't think about it. so the lure that works for swarms would work for them as well