Hi Juanse and All:

>Third, my bussiness is set for pollinating the blueberries of the father
company, and as a bussiness model we grow to follow pollination demand plus
a 30% more hives to overcome winter losses without sacrifizing pollination
needs next spring. As this year we have minimun losses we have more hives
than what we need.

If you had a good winter, then that might not be the best time to select for
winterability characteristics.  They are automatically selected for in hard
winters.  Plus colonies that are strong in the spring following a good
winter might be dead after a hard winter because too much brood can be a
liability if they use up the food.

Why not leave some of the hives in the mountains to the south and save
on your transport costs.  There is a tineo flow before tiaca and ulmo that I
believe you said you could not work because it was the same time as
blueberries.  Put a couple of supers on each hive you leave and maybe
make some tineo honey.  Probably wouldn't swarm till the end of the flow
and then might leave you with young queens and a crop.  Maybe your
mobile extracting is still set up in the mountains just waitng for some
supers of tineo, and you know those huge trout in the river are hungrier
earlier in the year.  And it is a cold bath in it anytime of the year I 
think.

Regards
Stan


Finally I believe this is going to be a very swarming season. We are under
El Niño influence, with lost of rain and high temperature. Bloom are some 15
to 20 days ahead past year and buds looks promising.

If I look at the sanitary levels of the sampled hives they are in great
shape. No varroa, minimun to none nosema spores, zero chalkbrood, zero TM,
minimun to none dark/small/without hair bees. The winter comsumption of
stores was minimun.

In the case of patty feeding I believe that was also kept to a minimun. 1 kg
past summer, 500 grams this spring. In the case of syrup, we gave 4.5 litres
to each one past autum with the fumagilin, and then we need to feed syrup to
only 20% of the hives (most of them late nucleos). In average we gave them
some 8 litres.

I was thinking that by culling a given amount of the smaller ones I was
going to improve  the winterability trait of my stock and at the same time
reduce the amount of hives now before the swarming season. During the
swarming season I will recover from the "losses" and increase in the 1000 or
so hives I need to do this season to follow the programed schedule of the
company.

About the distribution I think it is a bit skew to the left. The third site
is very similar to the two ones sent last night.

-- 
Juanse Barros J.
APIZUR S.A.
Carrera 695
Gorbea - CHILE
+56-45-271693
08-3613310
http://apiaraucania.blogspot.com/
[log in to unmask]

             ***********************************************
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 

             ***********************************************
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