-----Original Message-----
>From: Bill Truesdell <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Dec 9, 2006 1:50 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subect: Re: [BEE-L] ?The Latest Bee-Kill has  Experts Stumped?
>
Hello again. let me address something I do know a small about.  I was wrong in my initial posts.

I once bought a couple of queens from Canada in the mid-seventies.  They were Anatolian, which is more a name than an apt description of a race of bee.  I had read Brother Adams reports and was anxious to try this bee.  

Wall to wall brood in eight frame nucs, they were amazing, even with a small sample of only two queens.  For years I was sure it was the breed.  These many years later i am convinced that Silver Star Queens simply raised better queens than many i have had before or since.  Steve Taber, in his book, "Breeding Super Bees," (pg. 20-21) says that Dr. Farrar tested stock vs. breeding and concludes that how a breeder raises and handles their queens has more to do with how well the queen performs in a colony.  

So in the long list of factors of bee productivity, the very first in what humans can do, is to take extra care in breeding.  

The weather also effects queen quality.  A bad day, or worse a bad set of weeks with wind or rain or drought can effect the young queens environment before and after breeding.  If i am trying a new breeder and i notice the colonies i start with their queens are having problems and other bees are doing fine then I call the breeder and ask if there was a problem with queens shipped when i bought mine.  A good breeder will know and will tell you.  There have been real bad breeders, but by and large they are self weeding.  Breeder's do best if they can get your business year.

If everyone's bees are in poor shape in an area, you have an area problem.  There are many factors possible.  Weed sprays, humidity, rain, dry, cool, hot, can all knock out a crop.  Plant pests can destroy a reliable crop and these like all else often vary in populations.  The winter of 1968 and 69 almost all beekeepers who carried bees up to fireweed lost 70% of their colonies from dysentery.  The aphids, rain and darn bad luck killed a great many bees that year.  In the same yards two years later the fireweed did not yield from drought (in western Washington) and i had my first experience of bees boiling out of hives to greet the truck as we drove up.  It wasn't breed, it was starvation and large field forces with nothing else to do.  In both cases, those who fed their bees did far better than those who relied on nature.

I have no solution to what has stumped the experts, but there are always many possible factors and it can help in the future if one records as many variables as possible and addresses what is in ones power towards a solution.

Chrissy Shaw


>
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