Looks like I was to tired last night. I press "send" instead of "save now".
I will try to present again my idea.
First of all I breed all my queens and I am in constant selection in search
of "my local ecotype". I started from stock of four different origins three
years ago, and been selecting since. I have all the lines availables in
Chile, italians (cordovans, starline), yugos, primosky, buckfast, many
locals ecotypes, etc , etc and I have been freely mixing them up.
Honey production wise they behave quite similar and I believe quite good.
They are not viciuos at all. Darker ones are a bit slower in building up but
catch up quite nicely with the lighter ones. Darkers are better in managing
their reserves. stan sandler was here past honey season (that was a very bad
one) so he could describe my bees better.
secondly I had mayor losses the past 3 winters: 30%, 42%, 25%. This is the
first year with minor losses. Less than 5% in total. I changed all my
manangment and looks like it worked.
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.
Finally I believe this is going to be a very swarming season. We are under
El Niņo 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/
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