Will your bees attempt to swarm in May

[fatshark]

My bees can't tell that it's no longer May ...

However, by careful selection over several years (I only hive the ones I can reach ) mine now never choose a site above shoulder-height ... just got one into a skep from a small, dead willow tree.

I can't really claim credit for them also choosing a dead tree, but it did enable me to remove a few awkward branches and twigs before dropping them into the skep. Distant thunder and rain threatening so it's probably time I hustled them into a hive.

[fatshark]

Dumped the contents of the skep into a large nuc. There was only one solitary corpse on the sheet underneath the skep.
IMG_0952.JPG
Looks like one of your Amm queens DR ... and just as dead.

I'm assuming this was a swarm with 2 queens from an overcrowded split ...

[The Drone Ranger]

Least that one wasn't £35
Slip it into a cage with 9 or 10 angry bees and sell it

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[lindsay s]

I thought you would be less likely to see swarming so far North Lindsey
Shows how little I know

Swarm free bees would be the icing on the cake to go with our varroa free status D. R. But unfortunately our bees are just the same as everyone else’s. Early July seems to be the peak time for swarms up here, the inexperienced beekeepers and those who don’t practice swarm management suffer the most. It’s not unusual for us to have 8 to 10 days of cool damp weather in a row and then when the sun comes out the bees are off like a rocket. It can even catch out the more careful beekeepers. The biggest villains of the lot are the leave alone beekeepers. I spoke to one this week who admitted they had only checked their bees once this spring!!!
Here are photos of a prime swarm in July 2015 at a friend’s apiary. I popped by to see if she was there and came across them, it turned out they weren’t even her bees. Although the bees went into the nuc I was trying to fit a quart into a pint pot and they scarpered a few hours later. They were caught on a nearby bush the next day.

[fatshark]

Least that one wasn't £35
Slip it into a cage with 9 or 10 angry bees and sell it

I left her on the nuc roof and there was a storm of biblical proportions later so she got a bit damp(er).
You can have her for a tenner ... PM me your address

[The Drone Ranger]

That was some swarm Lindsey it was a bit ambitious putting them in a nuc
They look very black ready to export I would say
It must be great with no varroa they are a pain

Once bitten twice shy fatshark
I was putting a few new queens in mininucs today
One didn't make it because she hatched early
So I took a side by side picture
The one on the left cost £35 is mated and sold as AMM
The one on the right cost nothing is a just hatched virgin and is grafted from my own stock
They are both dead and gone
You might be asking why I bought the left hand one
I'm wondering that myself
I have had a possibly false impression that people selling queens are more competent
I am pretty sure now that is not the case (puppy farm springs to mind)
,




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[fatshark]

Here's one of mine ... a local mongrel but reassuringly darker than your recent purchase.
170506-04.jpg

[mbc]

I'm baffled by the concept of importing amm queens so that one has "native" bees.

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi mbc they won't be native
Or local
They would be amm
But in this case they wouldn't be any of those things
In fact in this case they wouldn't even be alive
I bought that one instead of say a Carnie or buckfast to see what was on offer as Amm
I wouldn't want to mess up the local gene pool
I hope people reading this will see what arrived and think twice

In the fairly recent past hundreds of Amm queens were imported from France every year and delivered all over Scotland
They weren't native either





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[The Drone Ranger]

Here's one of mine ... a local mongrel but reassuringly darker than your recent purchase.
170506-04.jpg

Nice queen fatshark I like the look of that one
I would be very happy with her

At the end of the day we can't all be grafting from Collonsay bees
It's a pointless excercise in most locations

The notion that an insect is worth £35 verges on ludicrous
Then I read people thinking their open mated Amm should be worth £50 or more (super ludicrous)
People selling instrumental inseminated queens at £110 (mental)

What's more these beasts are totally unproven other than laying up a mininuc
There's a lot of hype and not much substance
Queens are so easy to produce you need to be mad to buy them at those kind prices


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