> In fact I have talked to one queen breeder who purposely crowds potential
> breeders badly.  He considers the ones that swarm to be worthless junk and
> they get kicked out of the breeding pool right there.
>

If you recall I had both hips replaced last year so was out of commission
from July through November. I overwinter the hives by putting on two supers
over two deeps and left them alone. I had never had late swarms becasue of
my manipulation of the winter stores and it never occurred to me that I was
setting the colonies up for late swarms. Two did and the result was
queenless hives in the spring. The two that did came from a three way
split. I know it could have been something else but not Varroa since I just
ran my first OAV treatment and mite drops were near zero. (Same with one of
my mentees.)

So I just got rid of some "worthless junk" and confirmed that the colonies
I am left with are keepers. All from an unintended experiment (which I
should have foreseen but since it had never happened before it was
completely out of my planning).

Thanks Dick, for the confirmation.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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