Hi Allen
Some thoughts on your stocking nucs:
1) Maybe the poorer hives are not the best source for your bees:
The bees may be older, and have a higher % tracheal mites
(if you suspect a problem). Fewer, good hives loaded with
young bees could give you the clean, long lived bees you
need.
2) Tracheal mites in the shook bees:
Should not be a significant problem this time of year,
unless the hives are indeed really poor, with old infested
bees and a really poor queen (re point 1). If you're
thinking of treating, I'd suggest treating the source
colonies, before shaking. Then you start with fewer mites,
and don't risk the more valuable new queens.
3) Filtering out the queens and drones:
The drone part of this may be mostly irrelevant. The most I
can think of is the drone content of the "cup" of workers
you use. Drones will drift to the nucs with young queens,
anyway. To remove the queen from shook bees, consider
finding and removing her. It may be easier than the filter.
However, a queen excluder can be used as a filter, in a way
I've seen people use to make packages: by setting a box of comb (or even
foundation) on a bottom board, then putting another box (could be
shallow, with 3 frames, then a queen excluder, then an empty deep box,
and a lid. The bees from a hive are shook into the top empty box, smoked
and lid put on. The bees will go down through the excluder to the frames
below, leaving the queen (and drones) on top of the excluder. You then
look though the clumps of bees on the excluder, find the queen and put
her where you want her. I suppose in your case, you could shake
several colonies into the same box, add another excluder instead of the
lid, and keep the bigs trapped there, while you smoke the workers down.
Good Luck
Nice dandelion flow on here. Colonies still a bit small.
Kerry Clark, Apiculture Specialist
B.C. Ministry of Agriculture
1201 103 Ave
Dawson Creek B.C.
V1G 4J2 CANADA Tel (604) 784-2225 fax (604) 784-2299
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