Hi all,

I caught some discussion on requeening from Bob H. and thought I would comment. 

We don't kill off queens as long as they are doing the job. When we do our
splits in Florida, we will let good queens keep on laying and only kill the
duds. Then we put in queen cells s couple days later and the new queens mate
with the general drone population of the survivor hives. 

The survivor hives are the ones that make it through Cal. pollination, then
Michigan tree fruit pollination, then a summer honey crop. During the spring
and early summer we requeen as needed, as we can start to see what hives
have robust laying queens and what doesn't. 

We can count on losing 10% of the hives by the time we finish the year and
blow out the duds when we harvest honey. 

In Florida, we raise thousands of queen cells, and install them in all new
splits. We pick out the breeders that have at least 9 combs of Brood in
January in the panhandle of Florida. We also graft from some of Glenn's
breeder stock that has the VSH traits. We only target an installation of
about 10% or less of the VSH stock because we don't know how they will
measure up for monster brood laying and temperment. Our goal is to introduce
the VSH traits for the next years drone population for inseminating our new
queens. 

We only run about 400 mating nucs in three way deeps for harvesting queens
for checkbacks on the cell installations and end up buying lots of laying
queens too. It's fun to make the new laying queens, but man...what a lot of
work. We only get 2 out of 3 as a rule. Believe me, queen breeders earn
their money. 

We do get a lot of swarming in Florida, but that is kind of normal with the
Ti Ti nectar flow. We started giving the bees more room but supering the
singles early. Many of the singles we make end up doubles by the end of the
year to go to Cal. Some stay singles all summer so we can send them back to
Florida, double them up in January, and feed non stop for a late Feb. split. 
We use the patties too. 

Has anyone done any trials on the Mann Lake patties compared to Dadant's new
super duper Mega Bee patties? I will this spring. I thought that we could
feed half the yard one and half the yard the other. I would kindly
appreciate any comments. Mann Lake claims that dollar for dollar they are a
better buy. 

See ya,
Kirk www.sleepingbearfarms.com

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