Subject: | |
From: | |
Reply To: | |
Date: | Thu, 30 Nov 2023 19:33:38 +0000 |
Content-Type: | text/plain |
Parts/Attachments: |
|
|
Should I care if my bees beard? Should I care how big the normal winter cluster is? Should I care how many eggs a day some queen lays in a particular hive?
In truth I do not care a bit about any of those things. I sell honey and I sell a few bees from time to time. So, I care about how many pounds of honey I can harvest from a hive and I worry about my bees making enough new bees so I can do a few splits and raise a few queens for myself and to sell. I see huge beards occasionally. Huge like what looks like a gallon of bees. All it takes is for it to be in the first two weeks of September and the day was sunny, not much wind and 85 degrees F. About 7PM there will be that huge beard every time. The better the hive is at making honey the bigger the beard. The bees need to get out of the way so that days harvest can be evaporated. So, they beard. Is that bad?
Now, some other guy should be interested in measures I have no reason to value at all. The guy that is doing mainly pollination likely needs bees that build up earlier and faster that mine so he can giveemhell in almonds. He may want this same fast build up so he can split his hives more aggressively than my bees would tolerate for summer pollination jobs. To him honey might be little more than a waste product he would be better off without.
Both of us likely want bees with a low tendency to swarm. Yet, some TF guy might value swarming a lot as all the brood breaks help his bees deal with mites and winter survival may well be his number one issue. But, that pollination guy and I would prefer bees that never swarm as swarmy bees are junk for our operation.
All three of us might have fairly different hive requirements and wintering practices. That pollination guy and I might have such low winter death rates most years we see no reason to do anything at all to winterize hives. I do not even take off empty honey supers. My total winterization is to turn the inner cover over so the slot is down. At least I do that if I did not screw up and leave the slot up. Actually I can not tell a bit of difference between the two. I also drive the PVC foam entrance reducer in to keep mice out. The pollination guy has them on pallets and maybe simply trucks them someplace warmer for the winter. Or maybe he puts them in controlled cold storage in the Dakotas so he can get them into CA easy in the spring without a hassle at the boarder.
When you think about the variables in beekeeper objectives and locations things like some of the %s tossed around recently seem to me totally irrelevant in any general sense. And in terms of comfort for the bees surely they are better in my box where mites are controlled (usually) EFB is treated with antibiotics, the electric fence keeps the bears and skunks away, they get fed in the fall if they are in danger of running out of food and all the other things I do for my bees that no one does for wild bees.
Dick
***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
|
|
|