We'll push on for another couple of batches in the confident knowledge that, locally, late August/September usually gives us some really good matings. On the otherhand, our eperiment of starting early (mid April) this year was a failure both in poor matings during May despite a very large drone population and reasonable weather and in the damage it did to the over wintered mating nucs which could have been allowed to keep their queens for an extra three or four weeks if I'd followed our usual practice of not starting tilll May.
Just shows that with bees it doesn't always pay to listen to the experts. Better to do what 'feels' right, a lot of the time.
Next year we're back to a May start.
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