plastic drone cell foundation

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Question-> When you say they "get a little nasty with age", are you refering to the queen's age?


Reply -> I'm was saying, over a small time span of maybe 3-4 months, once the colony is rolling, the overall temperment of the hive can get nasty. That is a factor that I try to take into consideration for determining if that queen qualifies for the line I'm developing. I try to weed out as much drone comb as possible, unless a queen is a keeper. If so, I may add some!

[Hillbillynursery]

Quoted from Fusion: If your Buckfast are requiring more feed than Carniolans, then you don't have pure Buckfast. The Buckfast typically overwinter with less feed than the Carniolan. I've kept both and have seen this in action numerous times. The biggest single advantage with a pure strain of Buckfast is the reduced swarming. The second biggest advantage is the extreme thrift especially in winter.

I have yet to get a carnoilian. I said my ferals use less. I noted my Buckfast came from R Weaver. And no these did not have a reduced swarming tendency. I was making splits very agressively last year. The queen was right at a year old since she was what came with my packages in April and I started splitting in March. I kept giving the parent colonies empty frames as I removed frames for the splits. This buckfast had plenty of room and started making swarm cells which I used in further splits. The parent hive got down to 4 frames of bees in a 5 frame nuc and still swarmed. This queen was very gentle and 3 of the 7 hives I made from her are very gentle. The other queen I got as a replacement for a damaged queen was so agressive I could not walk through the garden 50 feet away without getting several stings. I feared some one would be attacked so killed her and gave them eggs from the gentle queen to make a new queen from(I removed all cells made on the other frames). I would like to get a buckfast from Canada or the Abbey to try but to much hassle.

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you said --> Anyone care to comment on the value of drone comb v. Varoa? I know some people use drone comb to attract the mites, then destroy the mites within the comb. What would the effect of adding drone comb to increase drone population have on the health of the colony from a mite population standpoint?

Reply--> Use common sense. I participated in Penn State University's bee management program last year, and they want to know what type of mite loads you are carrying. Iwas very surprised to find that I had low counts throughout the season until September. In September, the robbing begins around here, and mites are spread around. One should have some type of monitoring of mite levels. I used the sugar roll test last year. I learned alot this past year about alot of things concerning bees, and it only makes you a better beekeeper.

So, I would say, if you are planning to saturate an area with drones, make sure you know where you stand with mite levels, and if they are low, do it. If they are high, I would think twice, because you will increase mite levels with full sheets of drone comb. I like to cycle drone comb in and out of the colony just for that reason. I am not made of money, and do not like to lose colonies if I don't have to. So, don't set yourself up for problems.

[magnet-man]

Hillbilly, I donÂ’t think it is possible to get a true Buckfast in the United States, unless you can get her from Canada. I am not sure how pure the WeaverÂ’s Buckfast are, but I think my view on their Buckfast is well known.

As for getting a European Buckfast that is basically impossible since you cannot import bees from Europe. You can import seaman though and through II you could eventually get to a more or less pure European Buckfast. It would take a number of years and quite a few dollars since seamen is not cheap. I believe those queens would be unique enough where they would sell themselves.