Joe Lewis writes:
> Traditional wisdom in beekeeping is often more "traditional" than it is "wisdom" (or science). Stop wasting time and queens.

Amen to that. Actually, beekeepers have been recommending this forever. Almost 100 years, in Bee World:

> Just lately, I opened a hive which had lost its queen not more than ten days before, and it had six combs filled with eggs. I did not stop to count them, hut there must have been a dozen eggs in some cells. It is waste of time to attempt to introduce a queen to a drone laying colony. You may succeed now and again, but the chances are against you. Break up the colony and divide the bees among other colonies is the best plan. 

I apologize if I have said this before, but there's a saying that beekeepers spend 90% of their time on 10% of the hives. Would you rather spend your time doing fixit on hopeless colonies or on something worthwhile like raising queens and starting new colonies. If you have new colonies to tend to, you won't waste your time on the duds. 

Other useful sayings: Don't throw good money after bad. 

OR: I have forty years of experience. Yep, forty years of experience doing it the wrong way!

OR: Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18 (attributed to Albert Einstein).

PLB

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