Allen said:
>supercedure might often increase populations...and should in the long term
assure continuity of the colony.  ... what *could* reduce production is not
the supercedure, but the conditions that bring supercedure about.>

My take is that Allen's right in the sense that the conditions that bring
about supercedure, especially if the stressors is slow acting (e.g., mites,
disease, chronic exposure to harmful chemicals or biologicals) may be a
primary contributor to loss of production.

However, in acute or sudden events, the original queen may be suddenly lost
(e.g., chemicals used to drive out bees, agri- or industrial chemicals,
sudden expansion of space by adding honey supers).  In this case, the
colony may: 1) not successfully supercede the queen, 2) goes into a
reproductive nose-dive.  It takes 14-16 days for the new queen to emerge
and no new brood is added during those 2 weeks.  Give her a few more days
to mate, start laying, etc.; and you have a 3-4 week break in brood laying.
 Whether that reduces population or not depends on timing.  If you are past
the major honey flows and approaching winter with a strong population,
maybe you'd just as soon slow the brood cycle down - fewer mouths to feed.
But, if you've still got some major nectar flows coming, you may be in good
shape if you've got a batch of new bees ready to go to work just before the
flow hits, but you're in bad shape if all you have are old bees that are
just about worn out, working hard to produce new bees that will be "too
late".  Our models suggest that the time of year of an event such as this
may work FOR or AGAINST population size and production.

Comments??

Jerry






>allen
>
>
Jerry J. Bromenshenk
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http://www.umt.edu/biology/bees