So I’m curious if any one ever experimented with making a male plant a “female” by tricking the plant into producing more ethylene. If there is a way to make plants produce more ethylene can this be used to prevent strains from herming out
Yes you can use ethephon for this. There is a long thread about switching males on ICMag.
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Use silver to turn females to males and use ethephon to turn males to females. Id assume using ethephon would help with hermies (females turning male)
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When u use silver its not a hermie its female pollen.
Unless you start with a genetic hermie and spray that. U can test and see how much hermie (if any) a plant is.
That being said I dont generally use female seeds and i would always try not to breed with a “feminized” seed
They used to have a product called reverse that u sprayed on a flowering plant that stopped a female from shooting out male hermie flowers.
@Homegrown34 are you trying to make all male seeds? I dont see what the point would be as they wouldnt be “males” but more like “mostly male hermaphrodite”
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@drake the reason for asking to turn a male plant female is to apply what ever you use to make a male herm to females, to plants that have a tendency to herm out that way someone can prevent hermi
theres an old school way they make fem seeds in amsterdam. If you do it that way theres supposed to be no hermies in the mix. You are limited in selection tho becaues you are looking for the one plant out of several thousand who doesn’t hermie to breed with.
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Let’s say you get an “elite male” like Joseph OG, Breath or some such dreck. I used ethephon at 5-7.5 ml /gallon to make it grow female flowers. It required several applications, but it did work.
If you run a simple Punnet square, 2/4 are male, 1/4 are female and 1/4 are sterile.
There’s a good reason I say Joseph OG crosses suck, BTW.
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Geranic acid…if memory serves me right.
Rumor was it was turning all the breeders children female so the use was stopped.
The more you know!
I have heard or read something about some breeders will flip their male and see what the structure will be like in female form to help them with breeding. I think I saw that from the riot seed dude.
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I’ve done some breeding over the years-
Flipping males is only a hint of what the offspring will look like. You can use several things that will give you hints at the offspring, but it’s always a roll of the dice between the parents and even genes from previous generations.
@Dred_pirate is right that structure, flower density, sativa/indica dominance, smell, even frost can sometimes be gauged by flipping males.
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I can tell u from open pollinating acres and acres - there will be more desirable (looks 
)males who attract all the bees like thousands and thousands and there will be other less desirable (lanky) males who the bees avoid. It could be just that theres more grams of pollen on a strong male but i suspect theres more to it (smell, etc)
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I think it would be nifty to have a large field of them and have a bee hive next to it.
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I want some weed honey!
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You could have an awesome breeding project from it, too. I’d imagine. Have several upon several of the male you want to use. And then all the ladies scattered amongst them. It would happen, anyway being that many. But the bees would totally make some heady ass honey.
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Next time I make a batch I got you !
Alsoooooooooooo riot seeds makes a sex reversal spray!
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Bees use pollen to make propolis, which is a building material. They need nectar, or sugar of some sort, in order to make honey. That’s why there is no weed honey.
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Would the pollen not contribute to the smell and/or taste of the honey at all?
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Wounding a plant will cause it to produce ethylene.
If your plants are in a closed room, put some ripening tomatoes, bananas, mangos, pears, and/or avocados in the room. All of these fruit types release a lot of ethylene when they are ripening.
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It wouldn’t. Propolis is very important to bees, but the honey is made from nectar only. My girlfriend is a beekeeper and I have tried to talk her into the idea, but it requires feeding the bees sugar water and confining them to a single crop, which is just about the unhealthiest thing to do to a hive. They need diversity of crops to service, so any hive set up to work one crop only is not going to be as healthy.
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So why not give them a healthy diet of natural blossoms that grow in the area & a specified strain that’s overpowered with brix. Have sugar water consistent while also having aminos in the same solution with a molasses log near by. This could be sometching easily feasible for a beekeeper to do, it’s just the amount of effort to work it out in a structured setting. I agree they should diversify, but it’s the same as anything else, control the variables & you can make it happen.
I prefer to infuse my honey myself but that a whole other story.
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