What're your bee related winter plans?

[Calum]

Hi Gavin
the thought had crossed my mind, but the property prices are still in outer space and the beer is still inexplicably poor (ales are a different matter though).

I think bees are very oppertunisic and will forage and expand whenever the weather and crops allow. Dark bees are much better at this than carnicas on the northern fringes and mountainous areas mainly because they do not get so large and go out of brood very quickly when the nectar flow stops.
Bees adapted to local conditions - I dont think they specialize that much they are just generally hardier & frugal.
The biggest challange that I see is getting the dark bee strain to be prodomonent in areas, and improving its quality. You are right that there need to be numerous mating sites, and it needs to be considered that remote bee free areas are probably bee free due to the poor prevailing weather - not good for mating flights...
Raising large numbers of queens from good stock does not seem to me to be a big issue - a strong queenless colony properly prepared will bang out 80-120 queens in 2-3 weeks.
Getting these queens mated with quality drones is the biggest challange. If this can be met the rate of improvement should increase dramatically.
Even with a loss rate of 10% at each stage (queen starting, finishing, mating) this is still quite a few queens, at a reasonable price of 20pound per mated queen thats still over 1000 pounds in exchange for the honey crop from one strong colony. So there is a strong argument that it would pay well..

[Jon]

Hi Calum:

Raising large numbers of queens from good stock does not seem to me to be a big issue - a strong queenless colony properly prepared will bang out 80-120 queens in 2-3 weeks.
Getting these queens mated with quality drones is the biggest challange. If this can be met the rate of improvement should increase dramatically.
Even with a loss rate of 10% at each stage (queen starting, finishing, mating) this is still quite a few queens, at a reasonable price of 20pound per mated queen thats still over 1000 pounds in exchange for the honey crop from one strong colony. So there is a strong argument that it would pay well..

80-120 in 2-3 weeks is pusing it with an AMM type colony but I suppose you could use something more prolific as a cell raiser.
20 per week is probably more realistic and you can always use a couple of colonies.
I took advantage of any colonies which tried to swarm by removing the queen to a nuc, waiting 6 days, then removing all queen cells and introducing a frame of grafts.
One colony gave me 12 queens from a frame of 20 grafts and they were the biggest ones I saw all summer.

Re. the success rate, the easy part is hatching queens.
I reckon I hatched something like 110 out of about 125 cells started.
My overall success rate for mated queens was just over 60% but this was my first year trying with larger numbers. Others have told me that a good year can give 80% success.

Of those I monitored closely, the majority of failures were disappearances between week 1 and week 2 after hatching, ie on an orientation flight or a mating flight.
I didn't see a single queen with deformed wings this year.

[Calum]

Hi Jon,
even with the AAM, if you take out all their open brood and replace it with brood that is about to hatch you have a colony bursting with young bees with no brood to feed.
With a good honey and pollen flow 30 - 40 queens should not be an issue. As soon as the cells are closed transfer to an incubator, or in the second super in another strong colony (in queen cadges) - (I use an old egg incubator works brilliantly) and restock the colony with eggs in queen cups and a couple of frames of closed brood.. After the 3rd cycle they run out off steam so I am told, never tried three cycles, two were always enough for my needs.

[Calum]

Does Anyone know where I can get my hands on more of the equipment in the attached picture?
No points for guessing its use!