Chilly morning and the bees are making a low hum in the hives. I imagine they’re pretty tightly clustered and vibrating their wing muscles just enough to keep the temperature right. From where I hear the sound they seem to be in the bottom deeps, and that’s where I’d hope they’d be at this point. So far 11 of the 11 hives are alive, with a long way to go. Not too many dead bees have accumulated outside of the hives and the entrance reducers show no signs of mouse gnawing. So far, so good.
I never got around to an oxalic treatment in late fall but I’m considering a vapor treatment on Friday when the temperature is forecast to be near 50 degrees. Tomorrow would also be an opportunity, but the day job is in the way of that. I prefer to use a vapor treatment when the temperature is around 50 degrees so the cluster is looser and the acid can penetrate it better.
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I had forgotten to attach the October Meeting Minutes to the previous newsletter. I've attached them to this one for everyone's review prior to our meeting on November 18. I also thought I'd add a clarification to the piece on UNC's test of commercial queens in the newsletter. As I had written, the UNC purchased 12 queens from 12 breeders throughout the country for testing. That is; 12 queens from each of 12 breeders for a total of 144 queens. They selected the breeders from those that advertise in the American Bee Journal and Bee Culture magazines. See you on the 17th! For those that prioritize Opening Day of Deer Hunting over a meeting, good luck and be safe. Gerard
I'm just back from the Wisconsin Honey Producers Fall Convention, and I'm glad I went. I attended all of the Friday sessions and the Saturday morning sessions, and left at noon on Saturday so I could make the 3 1/2 hour drive home in daylight. I ran into Jeff C. there on Saturday and I believe he was staying for the afternoon sessions.
Each of the speakers, Dr. Marla Spivak, Dr. David Tarpy, and Ross Conrad held two sessions per day. They each shared different aspects of their current research to bring beekeepers up to date on a number of issues. One item of notable interest was David Tarpy's talk on the quality of commercial queens. I know we've all wondered about that because the queens we get in our packages don't seem to be as vigorous as they used to be, or we think they should be. The University of North Carolina purchased 12 queens from 12 queen breeders in spring, having an undergrad purchase them as "Joe, the beekeeper" so that it would be a blind study. "Joe" got the same queens anyone else would get, not "cherry picked" queens. The breeders did not know they were going into a study by the UNC, but were informed after the study. They then measured, weighed, dissected, and analyzed the queens and compared their results to similar tests done starting in the 1940's. (I thought I had a photo of the data screenshot, but don't). What they found, much to their surprise, is that today's commercial queens are equivalent in all areas to queens from the samplings done in the past with one notable exception. Today's queens had 0% nosema spores. The queens had an average of 15.4 matings, the spermathecas were full of viable sperm, body size and weight were comparable. The results were unexpected because we all know there are often issues with package bees and we thought it was due to inferior breeding. |
ECWBA NewsletterSince 2009 Archives
March 2019
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