Re: late swarming it seems to me the weather is tje main factor as it dictates the flows... management would be next on the list, genetics prob has even less to do with it again.
This is just from my small experience
Re: late swarming it seems to me the weather is tje main factor as it dictates the flows... management would be next on the list, genetics prob has even less to do with it again.
This is just from my small experience
Drones will go into any hive - yesterday evening I dumped a load of drones that had never flown (deliberately trapped above an excluder) , they flew around making lots of noise searching for a home for at least ten mins and went into any hive they could find. They seemed to be able to sniff out the entrances.
Jon, a 15 mile radius means that my drones and the minnowburn drones are well within reach, infact from Comber to the far side of Belfast and vice versa. This means that Belfast and district should be well satuarated in the Galtee strain drones given the numbers of BDBKA with minnowburn Q's. Also Amy (Killinchy) up the road from me who has pure extreamly quiet galtee kittens means that my virgins should be meeting the correct lads.
My observation hive containg a 110 Q is giving 100% dark bees while one of the other 110 queens is giving a mixture of about 5% yellow, probably met a bloke from south Down. So far the rest of the open mated are all giving dark bees but it will take a season to determine how good they are for temper and honey. I've requeened some 30 hives so far so I'm hoping that they build up in spring and give a good crop of early season honey.
I also observed the AVM thing but there was no drones involved in the small swarm, just workers aimlessly flying in a circle in front of the apideas, during this time workers would be fanning on the apidea, when the queen returned so did the workers again fanning in front of the apidea. I'm wondering is it a way for the bees to spread scent in the area of the apidea to help guide the return of the queen since the survival of the colony relies on her successful return?
Mostly I have seen it from apideas but one time it was the queen from a supersedure cell in a full colony which mated over the apiary.
At first I thought that by coincidence my apiary must be below a drone congregation area but it seems to occur in all the apiaries I visit on a regular basis.
With 34 hives I imagines your drones are dominating the area unless you have a bee farmer on your doorstep.
It is a percentages game and you will get the odd duff one - either for temper of for chalkbrood.
Any queen I graft from has likely mated with 12-15 drones so you could have a frame of grafted larvae with that number of half sisters. Some will make better queens than others.
This year I have seen a lot of improvement with very few yellow banded bees.
I would be curious to know if there are still yellow bees at Newforge which is too close for comfort.
They were supposed to be moved away but I never had that confirmed.
I picked up this queen in a swarm in a bait hive in the garden mid May so someone in the area must have a Buckfast type bee.
yellow queen3.jpg yellow queen2.jpg yellow queen1.jpg
I think in the rape season the surrounding fields will have lots of hives dwarfing my numbers
Well, it's a numbers game, isn't it ? So - say you reared 10 or more queens in year 1, and then raised those colonies on foundationless combs ... you'd then have a helluva lot of drones in the air, compared with those beekeepers who use embossed foundation and remove drone comb on every inspection, or those who deliberately install drone comb and then remove it as an anti-varroa measure.
An awful lot of beekeepers remove drones from their hives at every available opportunity, in order to maximise honey production.
You could also try using the 'moonlight mating' aka Joe Horner method to restrict mating to late afternoon - supposed to be good for achieving >80% desirable matings.
LJ
I take it you marked and clipped her, it looks very like buckfast, I'd say the source would be within a mile of your house. There are a few one hive beekeepers that are unknown to the Beekeeping Club.
By the way, I purchased one of these twist and turn marking cages instead of using the tube plunger type - they are very good. (Maisemore stock them at about £8)
This might be a good point to mention (again!) that Dr Gudrun Koeniger will be at the National Honey Show talking on the subject of mating strategies to avoid in-breeding, in the past she's studied the business of preferential in-race mating.
This year I have seen a lot more yellow bums in my hives
These are from the 2014 queens so I don't know why that would be
Still last year I got 3 queens all from bee keeping friends
One friend had 3 of Jon's queens and I "borrowed" one
That has been exceptionally good
The other two I got were nice black and gentle as well
So the plan for 2015 queens is moving to a mix of daughters of those 3 plus daughters of the best of my own using Snelgrove boards
As the oil seed rape ended swarm preparations started on those hives not already split and meant me taking out a nuc with Queen and leaving a single cell in the hive
So then it was wait till the new queen gets mated, no need to interfere just write the likely laying date on and inspect then
This year though several new queens mated then just laid up 2 frames or so and took off leaving a bunch of queen cells
Is that something other people have seen or is it just my bees that need a talking to ?
I just revived this thread rather than starting a new one
Last edited by The Drone Ranger; 09-07-2015 at 09:16 AM.
I think your bees need a stiff talking to!
Odd things do seem to happen one year and not the next - I had one particular year with chalkbrood. Another where queen balling was observed - neither before or since - and one where queens disappeared or just stopped laying. And one year where two queens fainted - to recover.
Hopefully yours will behave next time around.
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