Charles:  In the case we are discussing,  what triggers me,  is they made no attempt.
That to me is a huge clue,  they actually know very little about bees and
how climate and fauna and age of the hive (cohorts of bees) factors into
this.

For example a hive that's swarmed may have a cohort of bees that are great
for raising brood,  but the wrong age for foragers. I see this a lot making
nucs.  Bees of the wrong age will hinder  or stop growth at the time you
need it.  How would one account for that in starting out?


Overall a great post, Charles!!!


I don't really think they made "no attempt".  I think they started with what was available....what most of us get when we buy bees.


This season I bought two packages and four nucs.  The packages were from Georgia/elsewhere/bees on the move, and the nucs were from friends here in the Northeast.


The brood patterns in three of the nucs were great.  The brood patterns in the packages were "shotgun" in one case and nonexistent in the other, because the queen failed and I had to replace her.


It's a small sample size, true.


But "beekeeping is local", management of bees affects outcomes, and those things have always been true.  Let's just imagine the environment and forget what is going on at the colony level (mostly nurse bees, mostly foragers, hives with excess queen cells where all the neighbors moves in to engage in the excitement of swarming possibilities, etc).  That is a good place to start.  Then there would be two sides to the equation, essentially.  One = environment.  Two = bees and their biology at the moment (assuming health is at least average).


Christina

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