Late last year I met a man who does bee removal for his living. He offered and I accepted cutouts - as many as I wanted. This year started and I had three or four hives already established that had made it through the winter. I figured that I could take the cutouts and increase my number as high as I wanted. I have a decent property with a back acre that houses my row of hives. There has been typically plenty of natural forage for them to grow.
Well, long story short, most of my cut-out started hives have failed. It was a bit of a dearth this spring as far as rain goes, but this is still a pretty lush climate here in SE texas. Many of the cutouts had no queen, and when I realized this, I combined them with other successful hives. I've had no problem in the past doing combines, but this time I frequently wound up disturbing the established hive enough that the entire hive failed. Some of them with queens established themselves, but remained small, only to fail some time later. I have fed them, but found that during the spring & summer months, they didn't usually take the syrup (1:1), preferring the natural forage. In the past, once I had a hive get as big as a few frames of drawn comb, they would grow.
This year, mostly failures. I don't know how much might have to do with cutouts put in the yard that didn't have enough stores to get going and ended up robbing those other hives. I put entrance reducers on them during the summer when I suspected what was going on.
I gave the new hives brood when I had time and brood to spare, but frequently I had neither. I'd feed syrup right away, but that didn't usually satisfy them.
Recently, I had the guy give me brood from the cutout as well, but my 1st two attempts to give them this brood still wasn't sufficient. Both had absconded by the end of the next day.
I got in over my head apparently. I wouldn't have guessed that this year would have turned out like this. I'll be lucky to get 20% of the yield I got last year. I've got two decent hives as of now.
Massive failure on my part.
Well, long story short, most of my cut-out started hives have failed. It was a bit of a dearth this spring as far as rain goes, but this is still a pretty lush climate here in SE texas. Many of the cutouts had no queen, and when I realized this, I combined them with other successful hives. I've had no problem in the past doing combines, but this time I frequently wound up disturbing the established hive enough that the entire hive failed. Some of them with queens established themselves, but remained small, only to fail some time later. I have fed them, but found that during the spring & summer months, they didn't usually take the syrup (1:1), preferring the natural forage. In the past, once I had a hive get as big as a few frames of drawn comb, they would grow.
This year, mostly failures. I don't know how much might have to do with cutouts put in the yard that didn't have enough stores to get going and ended up robbing those other hives. I put entrance reducers on them during the summer when I suspected what was going on.
I gave the new hives brood when I had time and brood to spare, but frequently I had neither. I'd feed syrup right away, but that didn't usually satisfy them.
Recently, I had the guy give me brood from the cutout as well, but my 1st two attempts to give them this brood still wasn't sufficient. Both had absconded by the end of the next day.
I got in over my head apparently. I wouldn't have guessed that this year would have turned out like this. I'll be lucky to get 20% of the yield I got last year. I've got two decent hives as of now.
Massive failure on my part.