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  • Walk away splits? Who does em? What do ya think?

  • Queen breeding specialism discussion forum.
Queen breeding specialism discussion forum.
 #7445  by Chrisbarlow
 27 May 2020, 23:36
I've started doing small walk away splits with some colonies in apiaries.

I do it to test what daughters a queen will provide and to assess the daughters temperament in a given area once mated

It's simple and straight forward, a frame of eggs, frames of sealed brood and frame of stores, lock em up for four days and then open mic box 4 weeks later to look for brood.

It's makes assessing a queen and her daughter's straight forward. It can get applied to many colonies as long as a nuc boxis available, The queens produced appear to be of a good size with good laying patterns. It makes the apiary even with one colony self sustaining. Once a good queen has been identified who can reproduce daughters with similar attributes in a specific area, grafting can be done with that colony of required.

Does any one else do similar walk away splits and if so, what are there experiences
 #7448  by AndrewLD
 28 May 2020, 09:11
Not necessarily by choice, I have ended up doing walkaways on my colonies - as a result of finding sealed queen cells and after a bank holiday swarming nightmare. I couldn't believe how cleverly they had hidden swarm cells, even to the extent of removing the centre of the comb and excavating a void around them!

On two colonies I did walkaways on 25 April, one is looking queenright and I am going back into the colony next week. The other is queenless and I am about to move the hive around the apiary to lose bees to other colonies and then unite to a more recent walkaway that would not be big enough to take a straight unite. The queenright halves were given away.

Two other colonies were split on 15 May and a queen is in one half of each. The other halves are working, organised and I think one has already made a queen ; the other is a questionmark. I'll look at the ones with queens next week but the others I won't go back in until middle of June.

I split a further colony in my out-apiary to stop swarming recently; one half I culled - nasty bees from someone else's failure to stop swarming last year. I'll see how the other half gets on and decide what to do depending on how they turn out. They had already attacked the field's owner!

I am not too worried that this technique sets them back, they have more than enough time to recover and in effect all I have done is to replicate a swarm i.e. halved the colony. The spin-off is that I have aleady been able to pass a couple of colonies to my association for beginners to have and once I am sure of their status there should be another couple to follow. They are not normally swarmy but this year has been an exception that I am sure is all down to the weather and huge amount of oilseed rape.
 #7449  by Chrisbarlow
 28 May 2020, 10:14
AndrewLD wrote:
28 May 2020, 09:11
I split a further colony in my out-apiary to stop swarming recently; one half I culled - nasty bees from someone else's failure to stop swarming last year. I'll see how the other half gets on and decide what to do depending on how they turn out. They had already attacked the field's owner!
Thanks for your comments Andrew. I find the above interesting, so if you have a nasty colony , instead of giving it a frame of eggs from a known calm colony, you split to see if the daughters are nicer than the mother?

Does the daughter temperament often improve?

I would comment, I have never started with a any queen cells in the colonies to be split, I let the split make a queen cell from the a larva. I also only ever start with three frames, so if it fails. minimal loss.
 #7451  by AdamD
 28 May 2020, 11:23
I've never done them except once; I used an old BIBBA book probably 10 years ago which advocated splitting a colony into three to get 3 queens - so three splits in one go. They were small and the process was not beneficial so I haven't repeated it.

So I would ask how well-fed the queens are in walkaways - with not too many bees to feed the queencell(s). Is the queen larvae in a large pool of royal jelly before being sealed or there plenty of royal jelly after the queens emerge, for example?
 #7455  by Chrisbarlow
 28 May 2020, 12:16
AdamD wrote:
28 May 2020, 11:23
So I would ask how well-fed the queens are in walkaways - with not too many bees to feed the queencell(s). Is the queen larvae in a large pool of royal jelly before being sealed or there plenty of royal jelly after the queens emerge, for example?
All test queens produced so far have been good sized queen, there appears to be no issues with size. Certainly no grunts have been made.

I make sure the is plenty of pollen and honey in the walk away so food access isn't an issue.

I have buckfasts, so excess queen cells is never an issue, they appear to make 1 queen cell only, bee type might play an important part in how many cells are produced and how well feed they are. maybe...

i have not checked for the royal jelly post emergence however i will do that, an interesting thing to look at and certainly potentially a good indicator on how well fed the queen has been

I spoke to a chap yesterday and his bees had swarmed post pagden this last week. He stated when they had left, he checked the colony and on the queen excluder alone, there were 13 queen cells, these were carniolan bees. That would never happen with a buckfast queens, they do swarm occasionally, but 3-4 queen cells at most in a strong colony is what I have found. So if you did a walk away split with carniolan bees , may be they would create lots of queen cells with poor grunt queens in this scenario due to minimal stores and house bees. I don't know. I suspect queen type might play a part in how walk away splits work.
 #7457  by AndrewLD
 28 May 2020, 12:50
Chrisbarlow wrote:
28 May 2020, 10:14

Thanks for your comments Andrew. I find the above interesting, so if you have a nasty colony , instead of giving it a frame of eggs from a known calm colony, you split to see if the daughters are nicer than the mother?

Does the daughter temperament often improve?
Sometimes circumstances drive a less than ideal solution and as my post indicates my current aim is to reduce colonies, so I was not in colony rescue mode. There was no other colony nearby to pinch a frame from, my home apiary is full and no way was that lot going to anyone else.
As I said, we'll see and here we come across "beekeeping lore" that says a queen goes (escorted) to a drone congregation area where she could mate with drones from other colonies.... so the temper may change.
BUT some strains are know for only breeding within strain (Caucasian?). I know that having had a series of supercedures in my colonies - I can still distinguish between the Buckfast and Carniolan hives - so she might just mate with the drones from her own hive and nothing has changed. But if they keep going after my friend (not too seriously) and more seriously; go full on at me - their chances of seeing autumn are nil, zero :shock:
 #7460  by Chrisbarlow
 28 May 2020, 16:53
fair point Andrew, circumstances certainly do drive decision making.

Some one recently told me that temperament is down the drone line not the mothers but i dont know how correct that is.
 #7462  by NigelP
 28 May 2020, 17:18
Worth bearing in mind that most emergency queen cells are started where the young larvae are close to the original foundation, whereas "proper" queen cells are started on the surface of the comb. So it's not surprising that the length of an emergency queen cell (often called a scrub) is not as large as one started on the surface of the comb.
However, if you add on the depth of the comb to a "scrub" queen cell they are roughly the same length as a "proper"one.
Personally I've not noticed much (if any) difference between emergency queen cells and proper ones....The amount of Royal jelly in nearly all queen cells is far in excess of their need for it.
 #7463  by Chrisbarlow
 28 May 2020, 17:27
NigelP wrote:
28 May 2020, 17:18
Worth bearing in mind that most emergency queen cells are started where the young larvae are close to the original foundation, whereas "proper" queen cells are started on the surface of the comb. So it's not surprising that the length of an emergency queen cell (often called a scrub) is not as large as one started on the surface of the comb.
However, if you add on the depth of the comb to a "scrub" queen cell they are roughly the same length as a "proper"one.
Personally I've not noticed much (if any) difference between emergency queen cells and proper ones....The amount of Royal jelly in nearly all queen cells is far in excess of their need for it.
I'd never appreciated that point in relation to queen cell length. A fair point
 #7465  by Patrick
 28 May 2020, 19:02
I was certainly taught that cells raised under the emergency Impulse produced scrub queens and they might choose old larvae. But I think that is often in the control of the beekeeper more than the bees.

Yes, emergency cells naturally raised in a dearth could be sub optimal. Yes, left to their own devices they may raise a desperate number and not all of them great. Have I noticed them using much older larvae when younger was still available, no. Would they, if they had nothing else because I had mistakenly knocked down their first go - of course.

But if you are on it and select a good one and make sure they have supplies, I have had a perfectly serviceable outcome. I have (like others), played at getting nucs to raise their own queens and the result was fine, whatever Hooper thought of it.

Would I use it as a method to raise 100 queen cells, no. Would I use it if I only had one or two colonies? Yup. :D