For many years I avoided feminized seeds due to their propensity to hermie. This past year I tried again as I had been informed by so many that they have now been developed to a point where this does not happen often anymore.
My experience this year is that only 1 in 10 hermies, but that is still enough to seed my entire grow. So now I find myself stuck with pounds of seeded high grade pot. Which of course kills my costs margin.
So now, I am stuck with some great genetics that have hermie tendencies. I am straightening it out by picking out the ones that have not hermied for cloning for next run, but still, I have seeded an entire crop, and that can't happen.
My analysis is that femized seeds still have genetic hermie issues, no matter what the breeders claim.

What are your experiences?

I had fem the church from greenhouse and it hermied.

This is a post from another forum I thought I'd share;

A feminized seed happens from an other wise female plant being forced to produce male stamen, which produce viable pollen. When the pollen used from a forced female, it does not contain the chromosome that is needed to produce a male, so all of the progeny from that mating will be female...due to their genetic makeup.

A seed can also lack the male chromosome because it was the result of a female plant expressing the intersex trait. The otherwise female plant produces male stamen and pollinates itself. These seeds will also lack the male chromosome, but will more than likely produce progeny with a high propensity of carrying the intersex (hermie) trait.

MJ isn't as simple as XX vs XY like in humans...it is more of a XXyX vs XXYY thing....

And environment can only cause a seed to express what it already has in it's genetic map. And yes, if the genes hold the intersex trait, then environment can cause it to show itself, but environment does not change feminized seeds into males. It just doesn't happen like that. If a male happens along, it is a result of the intersex gene taking some prevalence and expressing itself as such.
Exactly as it happens in regular breeding. No difference.

I have used only feminised seeds for a long time. I have mostly used them indoors and have never had a problem with hermies. I would say 90% of them were Dutch Passions brands. If I had to guess, I would say that I have started with femed seeds about 200 times.

I tend to grow clones. So, I rarely pop beans. I have used exclusively fem beans for 5 years, now. I have only used 6 strains, but can say after cloning each of em hundreds of times and several grows that I have had no problems. Now, I have seen a nanner here and there during the last week w/ one of the strains, but I have only seen a few undeveloped seeds. I have also cloned that very same mother several times since and grown several crops of it without any bananas. This leads me to believe that the hermaphrodite tendencies are very related to conditions, and that some strains are more sensitive to conditions than others.

I recently took a different strain and purposely ran it longer in flower. I then gave it 24 hrs. of light for one day and switched back to 12. That was enough to make it spit out 20-30 bananas. My goal was experimentation. It turned out to have mixed results. I was able to get the plant to spit out nannners at the end of cylce. I wanted to collect pollen for attempting to make some fem beans in the spirit of experimentation. To my dismay, none of the bananas had pollen. I tried to gather immedialely after lights came on, and the nanners were not there the day before.

What does this mean? I really don't know what to say. All I can say is this. I would never flower anything for the first time without close monitoring. I usually introduce a strain by doing 4 clones of it. I watch them very, very closely. If anything goes wrong at any point during the flower, clones and mom get tossed. I am nervous of feminized and regular beans. If there is one bean that makes me more nervous than any other, it would be a bean from a private grower.

I agree. I think they are sensitive to light changes. The first year I went outdoors, I had the seedlings under 24/0 lighting before transplanting outside. I did find 2 out of 40 that went hermie. Since then I have put them at 16/8 and never had a problem. 16/8 is the daylight hours when I transplant.

I'm good friends with a good fem' breeder. I've popped at least 100 of his seeds without a herm. His methods are very simple but effective. The man knows his shit.

That's my personal experience.

Personally in over ten years of growing I have never really had a full fledged "hermie". Granted at the end of an outdoor season, a female will occasionally pop one banana and make maybe two seeds on the entire plant. I rejoice when this happens as these are some of the most stable seeds I've ever popped. S1 seeds are great. They are essentially a genetic copy of the mother.

I have probably grown at least 30 different feminized strains both indoors and out... No crops ever got seeded or ruined, EVER! However, I trust only certain breeders for my fem seeds. Breeders like DNA Genetics, SOMA seeds, Paradise Seeds, G13 Labs are all great places to start. These breeders are hands down not f*****g around! Their strains are phenomenal on every level including "stability".
I've actually had more problems with clones from outside sources.

Peace, E1

First off my oppoligy for asking but I do not know and need too.

I was always under the impression that finding any seeds was not a good thing.
When you find a seed (S1 as in your post) how many seeds is too many?
When you post about the stability do they keep haveing seeds?

I recently tried 8 different seeds from Greenhouse and 3 had a small amount of seeds.
Upon seeing this I killed the respective clones which in the case of 1 of them is it was a producer and had a great buzz. But it had more than a couple of seeds appox. 15. I would like to try this strain again but I am not totaly sold on these femmed seed route.

I guess my question is what would I get if I was lucky enough to get viable growing seed/seeds from this batch.
If all I would get is about the same amount of seeds I would find this acceptable.
Amount +
Buzz +
10/15 seeds not realy a minus or maybe a +

I would recommend going with another breeder. Paradise Seeds, DNA Genetics, Soma Seeds, G13 Labs, and Mandala are the ones I've trusted all these years... Never once let me down.
As far as the S-1 seeds, I rarely find them but if I do there is maybe one seed per ounce of sensi. If it's completely seeded out than you most likely have a full fledged herm. A bad trait to have is an early self pollinating strain. All the strains that produced good S-1 seeds, did so no earlier than week 6-7 and produced so few seeds you really have to hunt for them. Ditch Greenhouse, been hearing so many dodgy reports on them... Frankly, I don't trust them. Arjan is driven by his money, success and inflated ego... When you're main focus is large scale commercialism, some important and notable things go by unnoticed...

Peace, E1