Chickabuzz Queens: not a product of chance

What is an amazing Chickabuzz queen? We want the following in our queens:

• survives the winter (assuming we did our part; see Trish's Guide to Beekeeping so They Live for more about that;
• low tendency to swarm;
• makes honey;
• and gentle during the stress of a typical (or not-so-typical) inspection.

Think you need a queen?

Do you really need a queen, or should you just wait?

If you have a new hive, which was installed from a package, 4-6 weeks ago,
• AND you are feeding the bees with at least 3 quarts a week (and it's over 55 during the day),
• AND you never saw any brood... you need a queen.

But I won't be able to sell you one, because the bees will just kill her.

When the bees have not had brood for more than 3 weeks, they stop being able to accept a queen. Instead, if you have another hive with eggs and young larvae, you can keep adding frames (once a week) until they make some queen cells.

Then I could sell you a queen.

Or if you have no hives with eggs/open brood, and live within driving distance, I can offer you $5 queen cells, if it is during queen rearing season (from May-September). Email me to set up a time.

If you have a hive that only has capped brood, and the bees have nectar coming in (they are in fact backfilling the brood cells with it),
• AND it is a strong hive, with no record of eggs/young larvae in the last 2 weeks...
• ...odds are good the hive swarmed, and has a virgin queen on the way.

If you have another hive with a laying queen, you can find a frame with eggs and larvae, and put it in. They will either make queen cells (if the virgin did not make it back), or they won't (because that virgin is becoming a laying queen). Either way, do not install a queen at this time, until you see queen cells.

Well, when can you be sold a queen without fear she will be destroyed?

There are only 2 conditions under which you can safely introduce a queen.
1. Make up a queen-free nucleus hive. Put 3-5 frames in their own box. The frames should be mainly stores, but have some capped brood (like 25%) and some open brood (up to 25% of the surface). Then in 4 days, look for queen cells. Cull those (be careful not to miss any). Then, it is ready for a new queen.
2. There are already queen cells present in hive. You are a skilled enough beekeeper to shake off every frame (or it's not that full of bees) and you can cut the queen cells out. Then you can introduce a new queen (in her queen cage with a candy plug).

There is actually a method to this bee-rule.... you see, a queen from a strong swarm can usurp an existing hive's queen. That "victim" hive must be weaker in numbers for this to happen, or just not have a strong queen. And so the bees have a strong instinct to defend the reigning monarch. We can easily trigger this with a hive that has been without a queen for more than 3 weeks, curiously, or trigger this in a hive that has queen cells ripening.

A recipe for quality Chickabuzz queens (this is where we talk about why you WANT one!)

What you select for, you get more of.

Can winter survival be passed down from mother to daughter?
There is an element of chance to surviving winter, which is not heritable. For example, if the hive tips over, due to bad luck in selecting a new location, the hive is out of the gene pool. Selecting for winter survival isn't completely fair.

But a low tendency to swarm (so they don't swarm in the fall, which will reduce their chances of building up for winter), a high tendency to store honey rather than make baby bees, and some ability to fight off the pests and parasites of the hive will all help winter survival.

Surviving winter is a combination of several traits, but it is the ultimate test. This is why I only use queens which have made it through winter to be the "queen mother" for the next generation.

Traits that are passed from mother (or fathers) to daughter:
• low tendency to swarm: In 2018, I had 5/8 hives swarm in the fall. Talk about a low threshold for triggering swarming! In 2019, I only grafted from the queens which did not swarm in May. I only had 1/26 hives swarm, despite heavy feeding to get comb drawn and a heavy fall flow. It's one thing if a hive that was stuck in a single deep all summer chooses to swarm; it's another a hive was being fed to get frames drawn with wax, but they swarmed instead of cooperating.
• makes honey: bees choose what to do with each load of nectar. Should they feed babies, store it as honey, or draw out comb? While the needs of the hive dictate the choice to a large degree, hives do have "personalities" where they choose one over the other. I have to do my part and give enough comb at the right time for nectar storage, but even with enough space, some bees just want to swarm or make bees rather than honey.
• tolerant of inspection stress: Bees have to be able to defend themselves against an intruder; after all, they are sitting in a treasure chest. I select for bees that do not become defensive by the end of a gentle, 20-30 min inspection. During a typical careful inspection, sometimes bees get crushed or rolled (but see here for inspection tips to minimize this). But the bees' threshold to mount a defense is not triggered. They would be defensive if I acted like a bear, or knocked the hive over, or if a skunk is bothering them at night. Better yet, they are defensive against yellowjackets and robbing attempts by other hives. More on defensiveness here.

Are they mite resistant?

I'm not a miracle worker, and my bees aren't miraculous either. They will die of a crushing mite load if they are not treated. See this page for more about the dangers posed by mites and my mite management strategy. I do treat for mites, and keep track of the mite load in possible breeder hives. I use that information to decide which queen to use for next year; but this isn't breeding for mite resistance in the formal sense. What I select for, I get more of... so I choose which traits to select for wisely.

But what race of queen do you have?

Short answer, survivor stock. I track queen lineage in the apiary, but I didn't start from purebred. Their parent stock varies, from Minnesota Hygenic Italians to whatever a buddy beekeeper got last year (but didn't swarm this year despite being a strong hive). The founding mothers' names are Queen Abby, Queen Charlene, MH1C and MH2B. As you can see below, the color of the queens, and workers, varies quite a bit in my apiary! The queens are sort-of sisters: they have different mothers but were mated from the same drone pool.

When people buy an expensive breeder queen (several hundred to thousands of dollars) from a particular race, this means 1) colors are consistent for queens, drones and workers; and 2) the parentage of the queens and drones are known. This is possible for people who can do Instrumental Insemination to control the drone contribution.

When you buy a queen, often that means the queen seller bought an expensive breeder queen, then open mated her in their apiary. Which is fine - if the other queens were also daughters from the same race, then it will be about as pure as you're going to get for $35.

I am more interested in behavioral traits, like being calm during inspections, and a high threshold before the colony swarms. I started with a descendant of a Minnesota Hygenic, who was crossed with whatever survives Chardon winters, and then I have brought in queens others let me graft from - parentage "Georgia package" sometimes - which fit the behaviors I want in my apiary.

So, these queens are locally adapted, good to work with... let's call their race "Chickabuzz"!

A few words about the hard work a queen breeder must do...

It's easy to separate a double deep into two single deeps in a walk-away split, and then come back in 1 week to find beautiful queen cells in one side. This can result in great queens, because one of the key ingredients for growing a strong queen is the quality of the environment around her when she was an egg and larvae. She literally can't miss a meal, over the intense 5 days the bees have to feed her, before she is capped.

If a so-so queen is raised in a strong hive, with 10 frames or more of nurse bees, which have easy access to pollen and nectar, she can be better than the best breeder queen raised in a 3 frame nuc. Queens raised in a small hive, 5 or so frames covered with bees, maybe no foraging due to the weather or to a lack of forager-aged bees, those queens will go out and get mated - and then get superseded in 4 weeks.

Chickabuzz queens are not sold until they are at least 4 weeks old, so I can be sure the capped brood quality is good and the bees are not superseding her. I'm selling the kind of queen that I would want in my apiary.

Any queen seller puts in hours of work for a precious bug - there are many steps (or possible missteps) from selecting the queen mothers to successfully producing daughters. For the price you pay for a typical queen, you're definitely getting your money's worth.

If a queen is flying in an area with few drones, or many closely related drones, there is a risk that too many of the eggs will get the same key allele needed to develop - and identical alleles in this case are fatal. See my Inbreeding Calculator for more info.
Inbreeding Calculator