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Thread: Beekeeping on Mars

  1. #71
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    I don't have enough colonies or get properly organised in my queen rearing to know if there is better performance from late-requeened colonies early the next season with OSR and Varroa. Maybe someone with more colonies can comment? The only possible problem I could imagine is that a young queen might have more brood going through the winter, making winter OA treatment less effective.

    If there was clear evidence of a benefit from autumn requeening it might make overwintering queens in mini-nucs less critical. It might also encourage people to raise good numbers of queens during the best part of the season.

  2. #72

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    Hi Fatshark
    I'm pretty sure that overwintered young queens would be better
    Might be eating those words next year though
    I have friends who get attached to certain queens and give them names
    There's practically a funeral when one doesn't get through the winter
    I dont know much about Commercial beekeeping but at the moment for them I suspect they find it cheaper to buy queens in bulk say £10 a time than raise queens and feed the hives for winter ?

  3. #73
    Senior Member prakel's Avatar
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    No doubt Brother Adam's writing has also helped the Spring re-queening idea -although he wasn't buying new season queens to do the job...

  4. #74
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Brother Adam had an easier job overwintering in the days before varroa and its viruses. He used to overwinter 100s of 2 frame nucs and that gave him loads to select from and the winter itself would have got rid of the very weakest.
    Some of his ideas are valid today but some probably would not work as they did in the varroa free era.

  5. #75

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon View Post
    He used to overwinter 100s of 2 frame nucs and that gave him loads to select from and the winter itself would have got rid of the very weakest.
    The hives on Dartmoor contain four frames in each section, full depth, half width Dadant frames, four sections to each box with four frames in each, when a queen is removed or for winter the central sliding divider can be pulled to make an eight frame nuc, or two eight frame nucs. There were enough to over winter around 450 queens.

  6. #76
    Senior Member prakel's Avatar
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    I wonder how many of those precious over wintered queens were sold? Echos of Mike Palmer come to mind, stating that their best use is in our own hives.

    Is this a part of the import issue, a reluctance by those who've gone to the trouble of over wintering queens to then part with them at anything less than very top price? Who would want to compete with early queens from the continent on a £ for £ basis which is of course what drives most imports? Discussing a similar matter with someone a couple of weeks back I was told that Mr X (absolutely genuine breeder) could supply a batch of 40 queens in very early May 2015, including shipping and all paperwork at his end for £12.30 each. What kind of deal could he offer on 200 queens?

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