>Yes, Bill T, you are right.

Not necessarily, at least not in my experience so far.

The stock I am working with has been propagated from 1996 feral cut outs
being kept off treatments. Two of the five original colonies collected back
then are surviving to this day.  They have never been split nor have
required requeening by the beekeeper. We do not see the inevitable collapse
as these colonies advance into their third year and beyond.

If a brood break is a key strategy for varroa control (and it may be) this
stock appears to be accomplishing that on their own.  These colonies are
very good at splitting themselves by rarely failing to issue a reproductive
swarm in the spring.  I have been able to prevent a few of them from
swarming by checkerboarding supers but even these colonies superceded their
queen at about the same time as the others swarmed.

Another brood break is observed midsummer while we are in dearth.  As a
beginner I didn't recognize it at first and mistook the break for
queenlessness.

I like to think of winter survival as a trait and especially when it comes
to the queen surviving winter.  My losses are low, but most of them involve
finding the colony queenless and with laying workers in late February/early
March.  That the queen survives the winter to lay again in spring at least
up until mating season adds value in my book.

I sold four nucs this spring that were five frames with the overwintered
queen.  These were split from surplus colonies I made up from grafts last
year to replace potential winter losses but I ended up not needing them.
These nucs managed to build out the remaining five frames of foundation in a
deep plus 1.5 to 2 medium supers of foundation without being fed any syrup,
(this despite the fact that our spring flow was shortened about a month here
due to a much colder than average March).   We overwinter here with one deep
and one medium, and these first year colonies are yielding a little honey
harvest despite the shortened spring season.

The purchasers of these nucs are very pleased. I have encouraged them to
consider splitting out their overwintered queens next year to make increase
and explained that swarming is likely to happen anyway if they don't split.


I have not been routinely splitting my production hives and some of them are
going into their fifth winter looking pretty good.  However since I am only
having partial success with swarm control I'm giving some thought to
splitting them all next spring.  The one production hive I did split this
year was my best producer last year and I split the queen out to make it
easier to get grafts from her.  The parent colony requeened itself nicely
and I was able to harvest three mediums of honey from it.  In a more typical
year I believe a four to five medium harvest may be possible even after
splitting out the queen.

Please forgive the long rant, and I don't doubt that the scenario outlined
by Bill and confirmed by Christina could be occurring, but may I suggest
that like with many things beekeeping it's best to avoid painting this issue
with too broad a brush. 

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