Dats alot of hay Harry!!! You could feed a herd of cattle with that! ;)
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Dats alot of hay Harry!!! You could feed a herd of cattle with that! ;)
"Swarming and an emergency cells are two different functions,but I think the making of a queen cell for whatever reason has been altered in the bees genes. A swarming hive is a vigorous hive ,when you start taking out vigor you start altering your future bees, and the instincts which have kept bees alive for ever,in my opinion."
I guess that would depend on what variety of bee your talking about. I know that swarming hasn't been bred out of the Russian's, and NWC's still seem to swarm fairly often.:)
Yeah, where are these bees that don't swarm? I wanna get some of them. Our Italians swarm for no good reason other than it's spring. And yes, we have noticed a larger percentage of colonies that fail to requeen themselves after swarming. Also a larger percentage of caught swarms that go queenless after hiving.Quote:
Originally Posted by peggjam
Sheri
Sheri,
I noticed the same this Spring (and I had a lot of swarms) about hives not requeening themselves after swarming.
The chemical used by some beeks cause drones to be infertil. That may include queen producers. Maybe Hawaian producers with no varroa have a better drone pool. Personally, I gave up the year I got 100 bad queens. They all superseded in 15 days.
If you recieved 100 bad queens, something happened in shipping.Quote:
Originally Posted by jjgbee
It is always possible to get a few bad queens in a box, but the entire lot?
It happens. Shipping is to blame.
I know of a breeder that sends out a battery box with a data logger inside occasionally to his customers. The customer just sends it back and then the data is analysed.
Once in a while, the temperature extremes are quite shocking.
Anyway, the queens that I have got in march from KONA have been excellent over the last few years. Gus really made the difference.