Minnisota Hygen

[Bill Ruble]

I hived 5 packages of MH bees today. I thought they were a little hot and was suprised. Has anyone else experianced this problem with them?

Of course, I realize the bees I put in were not from the queen I just got so hopefully in 6 weeks when all the workers are from her they will be more gentle.

[tecumseh]

a fellow I met last year here in texas who grow minnesota hygentic queen cells in volume made the comment that his queen mother hive last season was more than a bit hot. the daughters of this queen may or may not be equally as hot.

bees without brood can get a bit frisky, yet when they acquire a bit of green brood they will often time settle right down.

like you say time will tell.

[mobees]

MH should be very tame. They are probably be open mated queens. I have seen and helped work an MH Apiary with shorts, no gloves and just a veil. They are excellent bees, some of my Carni's that have superceded with the local bees and are hot are my best producers.

[Bill Ruble]

Well, my MH are much better now that a few days have passed. It was realy only one of the packages that was bad, but it is much better now than it was. It is still hoter than my other hives but at least they don't attack me befor I even get to the hive now.

[Sundance]

I have enjoyed my MH bees. And intend on getting several more queens. They wintered even better than NWC's.

[Hillside]

"wintered even better than NWC's."

Can you tell us a little more? I assumed that since they were essentially Italians that they would winter in a large cluster and use a lot of feed. I've stayed away from them for that reason.

[Sundance]

I started 4 colonies very late and they were only singles going into winter. All 4 survived. Thats all the data I have.

[Mike Gillmore]

I have one Minn Hygenic and it is a bit edgy too. During the flow they are fine but when nectar is scarce they get a little bit unpredictable.
As a package last spring they built up fine and gave me a nice fall honey crop and left themselves plenty for the winter. They are really building up quickly this spring - my strongest hive.

[mobees]

Where did you guys get your Queens from?

[Kurt Bower]

I know that many of us post according to the experiences we have, but most of us do not have enough bees to make qualified statements (myself included). I mean lets face it, how many of us have actually done scientific studies on what we discuss?
Often I see posts about the one or two hives that someone has and how they have performed which is certanly nice, but not at all scientific. I only say this to encourage people to try different things regardless of what others may have posted from their limited experience.
I had a new beekeeper call the other night and tell me how worried he was about the Russian nucs he was about to take delivery of. Someone who has a few hives made the comment about how mean the Russian's were during a beginners course and now people are afraid. I have Russian's and find them easy to work. So who is right?
I can tell you of how well I like something or how much I dislike something, but that doesnt necessarily make it so.
Have a great beekeeping year!
Kurt

[Focus on Bees]

I also have the minn. hygenics. I like them. I had one hive that went into winter with two deeps and it was very lite. I thought it wouldn't make it, but, it was one of the suvivors.

[Bill Ruble]

What you say kurt may be true, but it is just like any other domestic animal, some clame angus are better than herferd and so on and so on. That is never going to change.

I am liking my MH better every day. I still think they are just a tad bit hoter than my other packages, but boy they are working much harder. They eat more, they fly more, the whole hive looks very active. And it is not just one MH i am talking about, there are 5 of them comparted to 7 others. Every one of the MH are more active and eat more than the best of the others.

[Sundance]

Kurt..... If you are looking for scientific studies this is the wrong forum. ;)

For the most part just folks sharing experiences here. Most info is extrodinarily helpful, but not science.

[Kurt Bower]

Bruce:

If this was a scientific study forum I would be snoozing right about now.... ;)

[iddee]

One person with a thousand hives, or a thousand people with 1 hive. What is the difference?

My guess is more info comes from layman then experts in any field.

[Borgnik]

If you only have one datapoint you can interpret the trend any way you want. While this is a great forum to share experiences, there are a lot of people sharing here with limited datapoints. I have to agree with Kurt on this....

[tecumseh]

iddee sezs:
My guess is more info comes from layman then experts in any field.

tecumseh replies:
well I am not so certain I would say ANY field, but as your question...

'One person with a thousand hives, or a thousand people with 1 hive. What is the difference?'

...might think that geographical distribution of the latter is likely much more robust.

as to science... anyone who has studied even a small bit of statistics would tell you that with one hive the mathmatical effect of n-1 (where n is the sample size) means you have 'a zero confidence level' in regards to anything you might suggest about this one data point.

on the other hand, devising some experiment which accounts for all variable is extremely complex, expensive and time consuming. and if you attempted to account for geographical differences quite likely would make any experiment impossible physically and financially.

for tecumseh the real value of this forus is as much the discussion of what does NOT work as what does work.

[Aspera]

for tecumseh the real value of this forus is as much the discussion of what does NOT work as what does work.

I definitely agree. Its very impressive how the beeks on this forum share both good and bad experiences.

[Fernhill]

>One person with a thousand hives, or a thousand people with 1 hive. What is the difference?

I'd venture to say that the thousand people are watching their one hive more closely than the one guy watching his thousand. No, of course it's not pure science but then neither is beekeeping.