Irish Amm

Here's an interesting site.

http://www.native-queen-bees.com/

Looks like he's on Facebook too now.

https://www.facebook.com/NativeQueenBees

Apparently he has a batch of queens ready to go next week if anyone feels like shelling out a mere £30 .....

:)

G.

Thanks for the plug!

Another AMM site is most welcome. Might even take over from Dave Cushman now the site seems to have gone.

Roger Patterson took over the Dave Cushman site. No aspirations to compete with that one.

Good value for £30, some other suppliers are much more expensive

Ahhh - tis you!

Excellent news - good luck with it.

Just want to say thanks to Jon for both of the AMM queens he kindly supplied.

In both cases I released them (observed direct release) after 5 days using a 'Dave Cushman' Queen Introduction set-up. They could possibly have been released a day or two earlier, but I wasn't taking any chances with such genetically valuable material.

The first queen took some 19 days after release to start laying again - with hindsight, this was due to the dysfunctional bees I'd installed her with - and it took a frame of brood to kick-start the operation.

In marked contrast, when I did my 7-day (after release) laying check on the 2nd queen this morning - which had been installed with bees from a thriving, vibrant hive - much to my surprise there were brood in the process of being capped. She must have started laying within hours of being released - and she's been laying as if she's on piece-work rates ever since. Impressive.

So - thought I'd take a quick peek at the first AMM queen's nuc to make a comparison - and at first sight, there's no significant difference. So - it seems that I effectively lost the best part of 3 weeks of the season by installing 'dodgy' bees in a nuc. Lesson learned.

Very nice queens, Jon - many thanks.

LJ

I think I am in need of one of your finest Queens Jon, I've PM'd you on the Facebook site. HJ

If anyone has a bad tempered hive that they have stuck with to get honey, now is the time to raise some queens and replace her once the numbers of bees in the hive has reduced a bit
Alternatively you can buy in a replacement which can be better in some cases where the local drones (including yours :} ) are an obstacle to improving things
Don't carry a grumpy bunch through the Winter theres no evidence that bad temper bees are better honey getters and they make beekeeping miserable

Agreed DR - the earliest big insight I had was culling an insanely stroppy hive (known locally as Psycho 666) - it was the best thing we ever did!

Culling queens and/or entire colonies is a very painful thing to do until you have seen the benefits.....