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Date: | Tue, 22 Feb 2011 13:01:23 -0700 |
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> Someone has suggested leaving them in the packages in a warm dark
spot along with feeding syrup until the weather changes. What are your
thoughts?
The rule, as I recall is that nine days is the longest bees should
remain in the packages.
If you know for sure when they were shaken, you can gauge by that, but
sometimes it is hard to know, since some producers pool packages from
several smaller beekeepers who bring them to a central point. There is
always the question of how reliable the information given is, too, since
the supplier knows what beekeepers want to hear and might 'forget' that
the packages are older than they recall.
As for holding the hives inside, I don't know what the limit is, but if
the temperature is down around freezing and the room entirely dark,
months is not out of the question. After all, people winter bees
indoors. At higher temperatures and humidity, the bees may not last too
well, but a few days should be OK.
Absolute darkness is a must, though, since bees will crawl to any
pinhole of light. There are pictures on my site of installing packages
into EPS nucs.
See http://www.honeybeeworld.com/diary/articles/pkgnucs.htm
I don't recall how long they kept these indoors.
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