>Do you cage queens in shipping style cages or do you use larger  
cages that push into the comb and allow egg laying over a small area?   
If a queen could be caged >for 21 days to allow the last bee to  
emerge, you could also treat with oxalic in August.  You bee numbers  
might not be up to par for the goldenrod flow though...

Waldemar

I would love to cage them longer but I need to get a fall crop &  
perhaps more importantly I need brood rearing to kick up enough to  
support production of "fat" winter bees.  I need to read mite numbers,  
adjust for flows, and weather to optimize impact on mites without  
hurting colonies--I also look at my day job schedule & see what I can  
fit in!!!!

  I use a push on cage that is about 3x5--my father in law found about  
50 really nice ones at a barn sale some years back that work the  
best.  But I have some others made of hardware cloth.

I'm also finding that strains of bees that shut down brood rearing  
during a dearth may have a similar effect to caging as brood reduction  
equals a dip in overall mite numbers.  I'm playing around with this  
but do not have an overall handle on breeding in this component--I am  
able to select parent colonies for grafting --I do not have the  
numbers or time to do a great job of breeding.

---------------------------------------------

With global spread of everything--tracheal mite, Varroa, virus, N.  
ceranae, Virri & potentially AHB genes (we get bees coming into NY  
from Flarida)  and I bet we see more in the next few years--The entire  
ecology of the hive is altered.  We cannot go back.  Its interesting  
that I have heard people start to acknowledge that there is more in a  
hive than just the castes of bees.  Varroa is the other common occupant!

Are we finally getting over denial!

Natural just cannot cut it as beekeeping is not --the pressures &  
goals ,of keeping bees as a beekeeper, are not the same as what a wild  
swarm in a tree in Arnot Forest experience.  Beekeepers can affect the  
out come of an extreme drought/dearth by feeding.  We tend to group  
colonies, in apiaries , in much higher denisties than in the wild-- 
thats worked for hundreds of years, and management--not just chemicals  
has made this possible.

I believe that intervention with cultural controls (best one is  
breeding/selecting) and managing a combination of production hives,  
building nucs, and first year colonies
can be an operational component that can be scaled up (to a point) in  
a commercial operation to minimize the use of chems.

Mike

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